Code releasing new album, 'Augur Nox' (stream a track)

by Doug Moore

Code

Code are one of the less melodramatic and more song-oriented bands that have emerged from the European black metal scene; it’s a shame that they don’t release music more often. We’re streaming the song “Becoming Host,” from Augur Nox, their first album in four years, over at Invisible Oranges this morning. From Dan Lawrence’s writeup on IO:

“On the whole, Augur Nox feels like the most expansive, internally diverse Code album to date, and “Becoming Host” offers a brief window into its profusion of sounds. Aort’s guitars mostly chug and arpeggio their way through figures of menacing restraint. The music remains black metal, perhaps more spiritually than sonically, but Code has also blossomed into an unshackled progressive force. In this way, they evoke other avant-garde black metal watersheds: Borknagar, Solefald, Arcturus, and so on….

In that way, “Becoming Host” is something of an avant-garde black metal cipher. Does it still sound bold and new? Do you recoil at a recitation of hard-won past progressions? Or, is there a third way: hear the new born out of the old which is always new in younger hands. The song closes with a delectable guitar solo and a choir of voices overlaid on voices. Code is saying, “We can sound like this, and this, and this.”

Be sure to check out the whole writeup over at IO. You can preorder Augur Nox, which comes out on 11/29, from Agonia Records. No North American dates announced in support of the album yet, but I’m ever hopeful. Stream “Becoming Host” below.

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