Hellucination release Penumbral tomorrow, 9 October. Ten tracks, digital only, and no label on it.
Eight years since Multiverse, and the gap is what makes the independent release worth a line rather than a shrug. A band from Rome that put two albums out through the usual channels and then waited this long has either been looking for a deal or decided not to.
The tracklist reads like a thesis: Thanatogenesis, Petrified, Starless, Fold Reality, Penumbral, Joy and Sorrow, Reverse the Cycle, An Ode to Entropy, Destrudo, Aeternum Vale. Entropy and the death drive on the same record is either very serious or a joke about how serious death metal gets.
Two of them are already visible. Starless has a video and Petrified a visualiser, both on the band's own channel, which is how a self released record gets its only promotion.
They have been going since 2010 and sit between death metal and groove, which in the Italian scene puts them next to a dozen bands who went harder in one direction or the other. Sixteen years and three albums is the cost of not choosing.