Reflections Upon Darkness



West Midlands quartet RANNOCH offer a refreshing take on the progressive death metal subgenre with focused extremity, fastidious technical precision & rich songwriting skills. Swathes of ethereal clean vocals & acoustic guitars accompany sledgehammer brutality & savagely intense screams, echoing a sombre selection of lyrical influences from Lynch to Danielewski. Forming in 2007, founding member Ian Gillings masterminded a sound that presents a distinctly home-grown slant on musical extremity, referencing such artists as Ihsahn, Opeth & Depeche Mode. Early concepts resulted in the ‘Rorschach’ demo, providing a raw yet evidently considered balance of melody and harshness. Following an encouraging reception to their initial demo and confirming the four man lineup as it stands today, 2008 saw the release of the self-produced debut EP ‘Talamh Màthair’, gaining an overwhelmingly positive reception in the press and securing a string of live dates that would result in Rannoch winning the West Midlands finals of Bloodstock Open Air Festival’s New Blood Stage competitions. Appearing in the 2011 lineup of Bloodstock Open Air Festival, the band featured alongside a stellar bill that included Morbid Angel, Immortal & Motörhead. In addition to filming their pummelling live set on the New Blood Stage, the band were also invited to perform an exclusive unplugged set on the festival’s Jagermeister stage, receiving a notably welcome reception. Following rave reviews for past releases ‘Rorschach’ & ‘Talamh Màthair’ (in publications such as Terrorizer & Metal Hammer) and a blistering set at the UK’s Bloodstock Open Air festival, RANNOCH now tender the next stage in their repertoire with ‘Between Two Worlds’. Proudly making use of the full tonal range in their twin 8 string guitar attack, thundering live drums & muscular bass, this self-engineered full length album features mixing & mastering from Stymphalian Productions’ James Stephenson (Fallen Fate, Rezinwolf, Arcite), having been recorded at a studio co-run with fellow Midlands death metallers Hærken. Conceived as a ‘virtual vinyl’, ‘Between Two Worlds’ is presented with an A/B side approach to its arrangement of tracks and features guest vocals from Hærken’s Laird Logan and Hal Sinden of talanas. The piece will become available from November 28th 2013 (the birthday of William Blake) through British alternative label Eulogy Media (talanas, Dãm, Beth Ryan). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.