Horrendous release new video for 'Preterition Hymn' • GRIMM Gent

This month marks one year since HORRENDOUS brought the metal realm to its knees in worship of Ontological Mysterium. After exploding from the underground in 2018 with the cultishly beloved Idol, last year, the Philadelphia death metal band were the toast of the genre’s critics.

Decibel, Metal Injection, BangerTV and Metal Hammer all listed Ontological Mysterium high atop their 2023 best-of lists, often right alongside the band’s recent tour mates Tomb Mold. The album also cracked the Billboard charts, climbing well inside the Top 10 of the Current Hard Music Albums.

Now, Horrendous are celebrating the first anniversary of Ontological Mysterium with their first-ever music video. The album’s slow-burning triump “Preterition Hymn” now comes with a glorious film treatment that’s worthy of a Viking funeral.

“Our long awaited video debut is a symbolic journey through the lyrical themes of ‘Preterition Hymn'”, the band says. “It’s a psalm for the lowly and the damned, the Preterite and the passed over, sitting beneath the feet of the elect. Our downtrodden heroes are driven in chains by a mournful god to their final trial in this realm, sounding their last desperate cries in defiance of the fate bestowed upon them–and upon all of us. Is their sacrifice enough to win salvation? To rise in glorious flames? In communion with the spirit of the song, we endured the pain of icy November waters, risking life and limb to capture and offer up an authentic sacrifice in the name of the Preterite ones. Lift your voices along with our heroes that you may ascend before the tides rise again…”

Ontological Mysterium is available now through Season of Mist.

➤ Order: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/HorrendousShop
➤ Stream: https://orcd.co/ontologicalmysteriumpresave

Tracklist:
1. The Blaze (02:00)
2. Chrysopoeia (The Archaeology of Dawn) (07:16)
3. Neon Leviathan (03:30)
4. Aurora Neoterica (01:56)
4. Preterition Hymn (03:58) [LISTEN]
5. Cult of Shaad’oah (05:24) [WATCH]
6. Exeg(en)esis, (03:38)
7. Ontological Mysterium (04:44) [WATCH]
8. The Death Knell Ringeth (05:20)
Total runtime: 37:44

“Surprises always come up during writing — spontaneous ideas pull you into new territory and enable the realization of novel possibilities that previously were inaccessible.”

Such are the words from Horrendous drummer Jamie Knox when discussing the creation of the band’s fifth full-length, the highly anticipated ‘Ontological Mysterium’. Knox’s quote also encapsulates Horrendous’s approach to extreme metal. Since 2009, the band has capably tapped into the inaccessible by providing a fresh, unconventional take on death metal that harnesses technical brilliance with elaborate, mind-melding melodies, frothy, spewing vocals and labyrinthine song structures. This combination has made each Horrendous long play a clinic in the gratifyingly unorthodox. The trend continues on Ontological Mysterium.

The follow-up to 2018’s Idol was recorded, mixed and mastered at Subterranean Watchtower Studios in Virginia, which doubles as the homestead of guitarist/vocalist Damian Herring. While the band (completed by guitarist/vocalist Matt Knox and bassist Alex Kulick) finished much of the songwriting for Ontological Mysterium in 2019, its recording was delayed by the 2020 global pandemic and various life events. Horrendous eventually finished recording in early 2022 and mastered the album before the start of 2023.

The album upholds Horrendous’s position as one of the underground’s best outside-of-the-box extreme metal bands. Having long abandoned concern whether people would appreciate their “uniqueness,” Horrendous has embraced its role as a band willing to veer far from death metal conventions, intentionally stretching and breaking norms. To wit, the band primarily views its music as filtered through a death metal lens. This may be Horrendous’s defining trait: By not accepting parameters, nothing is off-limits.