HECATE ENTHRONED Returns With 'Gallery Of Rotting Portraits' Single; New Album Due In May

British symphonic black metallers HECATE ENTHRONED return seven years since the release of the group's last album with a new, vicious single, "Gallery Of Rotting Portraits". The official lyric video for the track — created by Jack Maguire from artwork by Erskine Designs — can be viewed below.

"The single takes its name from the morbid preservation of the peat bogs, where bodies like the Lindow Man have rested for centuries," explains HECATE ENTHRONED bassist Dylan Hughes. "'A Gallery Of Rotting Portraits' uses these 'pagan sacrifices' as a metaphor for obsolete devotion. It captures the jarring disconnect of unearthing a ritualized past only to find it stripped of its power. The song confronts the cold reality that while the bodies remain, the spirits and superstitions that put them there have long since rotted away, leaving us in a world devoid of its ancient magic."

"Gallery Of Rotting Portraits" gives us the first glimpse of the much-anticipated new HECATE ENTHRONED album "The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried", to be released May 29 on digipak CD, limited-edition colored vinyl, including 250 Boreal Light (EU) and 250 Draconic Vision (US) variants, and digital. A pre-order package is also available with exclusive merch design.

"The Corpse Of A Titan, A Lament Long Buried" is once again produced by HECATE ENTHRONED and Dan Abela (AKERCOCKE, BLEED FROM WITHIN, ANAAL NATHRAKH),who also mixed/mastered the album with cover art created by Erskine Designs (INANIMATE EXISTENCE, BLEED THE SKY).

Regarding the new HECATE ENTHRONED album, Dylan continues, "Our first release since 2019, these are huge, epic, hard-hitting songs carved in the traditional HECATE ENTHRONED way with a menacing veil delivered with a crisp punch. Lyrically based around ancient British myths and legends."

One of the U.K. underground's longest-running and most respected acts, HECATE ENTHRONED has been praised by the likes of Terrorizer for their "mixture of death metal aggression with black metal atmosphere" while New Noise Magazine declares them "an absolute must for fans of extreme gothic metal." Originally co-founded in Wales by guitarist Nigel Dennen in the mid-1990s, the band is dedicated to delivering their own brand of evil metal with little regard to politics or the trends of popular demand. The group's 1997 full-length, the Andy Sneap-produced "The Slaughter Of Innocence, A Requiem For The Mighty" (Blackend Records),was a seminal release in the then-burgeoning orchestral black metal movement, and since then, five more studio outputs including their M-Theory Audio debut in 2019 with the "Embrace Of The Godless Aeon" (HECATE ENTHRONED's first recording with vocalist Joe Stamps) and numerous live performances have firmly established the band as one of extreme metal's most important voices.

HECATE ENTHRONED is:

Joe Stamps - vocals
Nige Dennan - guitar
Andy Milnes - guitar
Dylan Hughes - bass
Pete White - piano/keyboards
Matt Holmes - drums