Snakeblade, the Vancouver-based one-man project created by Mike Redston has posted two new slithering music videos for “Foul Sorcery Of Flame and Shadow” and “The Red Mage's Seduction” off the latest album The Curse released on October 13.

Self-coined as “One-Man Nerdy’n’Dirty Black Metal”, over the past year and a half, the ever intrepid Mike Redston aka Snakeblade has written, performed, and recorded two albums, “The Kingdom” in 2020 and The Curse in 2021. The Curse is quite an evolution, growing in both complexity and scale with the addition of a session drummer to handle the kit. Mike Redston formed the solo project in the midst of the pandemic, as a distraction. To deepen the escape, all his lyrics surrounded fantasy concepts from his favorite series - Game of Thrones.

“Snakeblade is where all my nerdiness gets released. On The Curse, I wanted to zero in on one of my all-time favorite fantasy series - Game of Thrones. As I started writing though, more personal experiences started to creep into my lyrics. What came out is a melting pot of themes from Game of Thrones and my personal shit. Lyrics inspired by GOT mostly revolve around the plotlines of The Red Woman, Stannis Baratheon, and The Lord of Light religion. Mix all this with my own experiences of betrayal, failure, and rage and you’ve got The Curse.”

The Curse is ten tracks of dark, dirty, and epic non-traditional black metal, and has a total running time of 43 minutes. It was written and performed by Redston except for the drums, which were performed by Dennis Kraakman. The album artwork was done by Elizabeth Holmes.

Snakeblade isn’t destined to be a studio project forever, Redston says, “Live shows are definitely in the cards as I want to bring these songs to a concert setting with a ton of energy and a fun atmosphere.”

For fans of death and black metal both new and old, Snakeblade is recommended for fans of Dimmu Borgir, Death and Skeletonwitch. Order the album on Bandcamp.

Album artwork by Elizabeth Holmes:

Tracklisting:

“Destiny (Intro)”
“Rotten Souls”
“Harvester”
“Dreams Of Aida”
“The Red Mage’s Seduction”
“Foul Sorcery Of Flame And Shadow”
“Godswood”
“Born Among Salt And Smoke”
“Archways”
“Exile, Outlaw…The Essence”