Existentialismus by Abduction

UK extreme metallers Abduction will release their highly anticipated new album, Existentialismus, on 21st February 2025, via Candlelight.

Following their explosive 2022 album, Black Blood, which showcased the band's fiercely expansive sound, Abduction are now poised to push their musical boundaries even further. With many bands currently paying homage to black metal’s glory years and just as many attempting to connect unrelated workings to that legacy, Abduction’s music manages to be both recognisably authentic and imbued with its own spirit. And never has this been truer than in the new album, Existentialismus.

Ahead of the release date, the band have shared first single ‘A Legacy of Sores’ with accompanying video.

Check out ‘A Legacy of Sores’ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MF2fJiCXZk

“The most obvious expansion is in the voice,” considers vocalist and founder A|V. “I felt that vocally, I had more freedom to express the lyrics and messages with fewer genre leashes. Given the themes of pain, frustration, and fear involved, it made sense to convey that in its most natural state rather than performing to certain expectations. The vocals and lyrics are important to me, so I let them breathe and counterpoint the bands playing.”

Having become one of the UK’s most visible black metal acts on the live circuit, bringing their ritualistic and immersive performances to audiences at club shows and festivals as Damnation, Bloodstock, Incineration, Fortress, Doomsday, Mass Destruction, Samhain, Reaperfest and Eradication, Existentialismus has been recorded, for the first time, as a full band.

“It’s inspired by the juxtaposition of this horrible post-truth era with its contradictions and the simple, metaphorical truths that began in ancient religions of the crumbling past. Somewhere between a biblical gospel and a Nietzschean nightmare. As a father, there’s a particular terror in seeing all that our grandfathers built, physically and morally, being torn apart and reduced to a commodity and wondering what kind of world my son will inherit.”

“I am by no means a philosopher – I desperately lack the patience,” A|V admits. “But my observations of the modern Western humane race have become particularly bleak, and this informs my lyrical writing process. Art as a reaction to life and experience. This is laid out in the first track, ‘A Legacy of Sores’, which posits that most of us here, in the current year, have become an alarming pairing of being both too sensitive and yet without any core beliefs to stand on. (‘Wet skin now paper thin, reveals a core of dust’) I think this is a mixture of a post-religious society and the acceleration of technology to the point at which its claws are deeply in us. Have you tried to live without a smartphone recently?”

Existentialismus was recorded and produced by Ian Boult at Stuck On A Name Studios in Nottingham, while the final touches of post-production and mastering were handled by Tore Stjerna (Watain, Mayhem, Deströyer 666) at Necromorbus Studios in Sweden. The striking and immersive cover art is the work of Julia Soboleva.

Abduction are poised to bring bleakness and truth to audiences across the UK on their headline tour with Andracca. The dates are as follows:

27 Oct: Ivory Black, Glasgow
28 Oct: Trillions, Newcastle
29 Oct: Zanzibar, Liverpool
30 Oct: Dust, Brighton
31 Oct: The Old Salutation Inn, Nottingham
2 Nov: Underground, Plymouth

'Existentialismus' Will be released by Candlelight Records on Feb 21st.

candlelightrecords.co.uk