Oakenthrone have released "A Vigil Under Sol", the first piece of Ad Silvam, which Vendetta Records put out on 27 November.
Seven tracks, and the shape of them tells you what kind of record it is: "Awacen" at two and a half minutes to open, then the long ones, with "Monolith", "Augur of Petrichor" and the closing "Et Sic Ad Silvam" all past seven. The Welsh word in the middle of an otherwise Latin running order is worth noticing too.
They formed in Manchester in 2022 and have been prolific in the way the British black metal underground tends to be, ten releases in four years with only one of them a full album. Vendetta, a German label, is the first proper distribution they have had.
English black metal has spent the last decade building something distinct from the Scandinavian template, slower and more concerned with landscape, and the title of this one points straight at it.