UK extreme metallers Abduction have released their immersive second single, "Razors Of Occam", a gripping prelude to the forthcoming album, Existentialismus, due for release on February 21, 2025, via Candlelight. The track serves as a visceral glimpse into the band’s otherworldly, introspective universe, while its haunting video, directed by Jake Kindred, draws viewers deep into the emotional abyss of Abduction's world. 

"'Razors Of Occam' is a celebration of the back-breaking labour that our grandfathers and grandmothers endured over the past century to build the houses and systems that maintain our (relative) safety and comfort here in the west', comments vocalist A|V. '"There's more honour in the last gasping breath, spilled forth from a dying old man's chest, than in all the seas of all the tears the younger can conjure. For with one wish, they'd give it all away."

Following their explosive 2022 album, Black Blood, which showcased the band's fiercely expansive sound, Abduction is 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 recognizably authentic and imbued with its spirit. And never has this been truer than in the new album, Existentialismus.

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 such as Damnation, Bloodstock, Incineration, Fortress, 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.

Preorder here.

Tracklisting:

“A Legacy Of Sores”
“Pyramidia Liberi”
“Truth Is As Sharp A Sword As Vengeance”
“Blau ist die Farbe der Ewigkeit”
“Razors Of Occam”
“Vomiting At Baalbek”

“Razors Of Occam” video:

(Photo: Jack Armstrong)