Extol released Aura Of Decay today, thirteen years after the last one, and marked it with a video for The One And The Many.
Kristoffer Grindheim shot it in black and white, which for this band is less a style choice than a refusal of one. Extol have spent their whole career at an angle to everything around them, and a monochrome film is the opposite of what a comeback single usually looks like.
The title is the oldest argument in philosophy put into four words, and the band have never been shy about that sort of thing. Their records have always carried more text than the genre expects.
They confirmed the album was coming earlier this year, and Merciless Hunger came out ahead of it.
Thirteen years is long enough for a band to be remembered rather than followed, and this is the record that decides which one they are.