Aethereus is now streaming their new record Leiden in full, should you need every killer riff in the book right this very minute. It's an excellent record that encompasses everything from impressive progressive elements to downright brutal-as-shit passages, sometimes all at once.
"Leiden [pronounced lie-den] is a more ambitious and experimental follow-up to Absentia. The lyrics describe a character’s descent into darkness as he ripped out of time into another dimension. He journeys through an alien world following colossal godlike beings with hopes of finding enlightenment regarding existence and his purpose all while grappling with his fragmenting psyche and deteriorating perception of reality.
"While we always have a lyrical concept at the heart of our albums, we really wanted to create a melodic concept to further accentuate it this time around. We wrote and arranged Leiden in a way that it begins more conventionally melodic and then progressively gets more dissonant, with recurring motifs becoming uglier and more unrecognizable with each song, reflecting the character’s descent into madness.
"Recorded almost entirely in isolation during the pandemic, this album is very much representative of the collective anxieties, stress, and uncertainties we experienced during the last 2 years."
Leiden was recorded entirely by the band at their separate homes. The album was mixed and mastered by Christian Donaldson (Cryptopsy) at The Grid Studios in Montreal and features guest appearances by Mike Alvarez (Flub), Mike Low (Inferi), Malcolm Pugh (Inferi), Sanjay Kumar (Wormhole, Equipoise), and Kyle Rasmussen (Vitriol).
Leiden is out on January 14 and is available here and here on Bandcamp.
