Serpent have a video for Lightbringer, and behind it an album that has been a long time arriving. The Pit and the Pendulum comes out on 13 November through Hammerheart Records, as a coloured vinyl limited to 250 copies, and it is the Stockholm band's first full length in the twenty six years since it formed.
What came before: five demos between 2001 and 2005, a video in 2006, then nothing at all from 2007 until a self titled EP in 2022. The restart brought in Kristian Niemann, of Sorcerer and Demonoid and formerly of Therion, and the band has worked steadily since.
The nine tracks are Introitus ad Inferos, Serpent Rising, Necromancer, the title song, Der Hexenjäger, Lightbringer, Season of the Witch, Salem 1692 and Magna Mortalitas. Poe gives the record its name and the Spanish Inquisition gives it the room described in the story; the rest of the titles stay with witch hunts and plague.
The credits do not quite agree with each other. Hammerheart list the album as Kenneth Alutoin on vocals and Niemann on everything else, guitars, bass, drums, synths and backing vocals. Metal Archives lists the band as two people, Sin on bass and vocals since 2000 and Niemann on guitars since 2022.
The video was shot on a green screen in Åkersberga, north of Stockholm, with Richard Hedlund behind the camera, Andrea Mantelli editing and Kenneth Axx producing. The label files the music as Swedish melodic death metal with occult themes; Metal Archives has it as death and thrash.