Exclusive: The latest offering from Colorado black metallers Helleborus is a haunted fable of fire, sex, and darkness.
What Helleborus channel most about their home state of Colorado is the brooding, haunted vibe of the wilderness. The Manitou Springs-based quartet, featuring former Uada drummer Brent Boutte, play dramatic, unabashedly eerie black metal with heavy yet organic-sounding doses of early melodic death metal and goth, adding an almost romantic quality to the band's sonic diabolicisms. That old-world fairy-tale sense of malevolent spiritualism and poetic horror is thick in the Rockies, whose looming shapes and thick woods feel like sulking gods who would love nothing more than to watch you wander into their shadows and never be heard from again.
The band stage just such a scenario in their latest video for the track Blåkulla's Meadow, from their upcoming sophomore album Saprophytic Divinations. Directed by Guilherme Henriques with art direction by Catarina Rocha, the video shows a lone magus of sorts wandering into the forest at night, gathering herbs and nocturnal plants before hailing the moon over a blazing fire. Unfortunately for him, the moon answers in ways that he may or may not have expected, and the night takes him. Naturally lit and carefully paced, the footage is reminiscent of Robert Eggers' The Witch, right down to the NSFW climax.
READ THIS: Happy holidays from Black Metal Santa
"We take our initiation deeper into The Poison Path as we observe the Witches Sabbath within a great meadow whereof you can see no end," says Helleborus of the video for Blåkulla's Meadow. "We pray for flight from cenote catacombs and join Devil’s daughter to commit venereous and carnal acts among toads and serpents."
Watch our exclusive premiere of Helleborus's video for Blåkulla's Meadow below:
Helleborus's Saprophytic Divinations comes out Friday, December 6, via Redefining Darkness Records, and is available for preorder. Behold its cover below and despair:
