Cloak have released Nigredo Initium, the first song from Above, Below, and Through, which Metal Blade Records puts out on 12 February.
When the album was announced a week ago there was a title, a date and a label and nothing else. Now there is a song, Jordan Barlow's cover art and a running order of eight, from this one through Of Shadow and Sleep, Into Death's Light, Horrors Profound, Levitation, The Arcane Beckoning and The Mare to the title track.
Nigredo Initium was the first thing the current four wrote together, which the band point out is fitting given what the word means. Nigredo is the blackening, the first stage of the alchemical work, the part where the material is broken down before anything can be made of it. Scott Taysom and Max Brigham founded the band in Atlanta in 2013 and are now playing with drummer Matt Morris and bassist Rafay Nabeel.
Taysom describes the record as built on thresholds, between life and death, dream and consciousness, beast and man. Alex Parra produced, with John Douglass engineering the drums.
Metal Blade is a larger room than this band has worked in before, and the first song is the moment that stops being an announcement and starts being evidence.