An unusual East-West international extreme metal collaboration is seeing the light, with the Lebanese band Kaoteon, originally from Beirut in the Middle East but now based in Amsterdam, teaming up with bass wizard Linus Klausenitzer from Obscura and drum master Fredrik Widigs from Marduk as session players on a new album, titled Damnatio Memoriae.

To add to the project’s global mix, Kaoteon have new management in the UK under the care of Dr. Lina “Metalina” Khatib and the album was mixed and mastered in Sweden by Daniel Bergstrand, renowned for his work with Abbath, Behemoth, and Dark Funeral.

This multi-country collaboration is the first to bring together Widigs and Klausenitzer on this one-off project. Klausenitzer described Kaoteon as, “legends of the Lebanese metal scene”, after performing with them live for the first time in Beirut in April at the Beirut Metal Fest.

On this on-of-a-time collaboration with the two international musicians, Kaoteon founder Anthony said that after listening to Klausenitzer and then Widigs perform, “I came back home and their pounding instruments over my guitar riffs and my bandmate Wolflust’s vocals were all I had in mind to create this trademark of an album.”  

This global partnership is part of Kaoteon’s mission to express the band’s struggles in the Middle East to a global audience, through “delivering an unpolished flavour of extreme metal, forged through over 30 years in the abyss,” as vocalist Wolflust puts it.

The band has released lyric videos for two songs from the album, “Non Serviam” and “The Will”, available for streaming below:

Stay tuned for updates on the album release, coming soon.