We’ve joined forces with Season Of Mist to bring you a pre-release listen to a new track from Brazil’s Grave Desecrator from their forthcoming new album. Not released until June 3rd, ‘A Witching Whore’ is taken from Dust To Lust; it’s appropriately mid-paced and gruff in all the right ways, and the track we have here to get your ears around also displays some of the band’s killer-lead work – it’s well worth taking the time to give it a proper listen!
Guitarist and vocalist Butcherazor comments on behalf of the band: “The track ‘A Witching Whore’ is based on a narrative about a mystical and unknown character from Rio de Janeiro in the XVIII Century, known as ‘Bárbara dos Prazeres’ (‘Barbara of the Delights’). She was probably an even more gruesome and bloody Brazilian version of the infamous Elizabeth Bathory. We are the first band to evoke Bárbara’s memory in music. She was a famous prostitute in Rio at the time, yet over the years she grew depraved. In witchcraft and black magic she found a possible solution to bring her once splendorous beauty back: virgin blood! Barbara was responsible for bloodbaths sacrificing hundreds of newborn children. We are musically expressing all the torments this woman carried out on her victims with harsh riffs dragged from a devastating foundation, an outstanding guitar solo, as well as highlights reflecting the apex of pain. Even most people living in Rio have not heard about this horrendous story. This veiled secrecy and dark contrast with open and ‘sunny’ Rio that most of you might associate with this city give the essential grey touch to this song. Embark on this journey, where death is certain, but can come painfully slow.”
Of their forthcoming album from which the track’s taken, the band comments: “Our new album Dust To Lust is expressing what Grave Desecrator are about. It is aimed straight at the heart of religion, the misconception of ‘god’, salvation, peace – and all those elements which provide the breeding ground for corrupted and twisted convictions. Of course, this is nothing new in the realm of black or death metal. Yet as Brazilians, we are nowadays witnessing a period of intense mission and conversion by radical evangelists spreading through our country. We give them a hard fistful of rejection as this is personal and happening right in front of our eyes!”
Cover artist Zbigniew M. Bielak gives some of his thought towards the artwork: “With all its contrasts, hostility, intolerance, corruption, Brazil has proven to be a time capsule for the mundane times of uniformity and facilitation, which nowadays render the western metal so tame and complacent. That being said, Grave Desecrator’s story is no different from the ones of Sarcófago, Sepultura or even Slayer in their tough formative ’80s. In rivers of rehearsal sweat and against all odds, album by album, they slowly polished their rough stone into a deadly blade. And now it is time to bleed. It is not easy to pinpoint the spirit of Brazilian extreme metal – it is a fine mixture of tanned sexuality and funerary sacrilege that only few could convey the way Sarcofago or Sextrash did. These four derailed rovers of abomination and forbidden fun certainly can! It has been an honour to embark on this journey with them and for once illustrate a flawless 80’s album. I praise the old Brazilian scene and Sarcófago’s ‘Rotting’ cover is among my favourite artworks of all time, so obviously the artwork for Dust To Lust pays some homage here and there. The inner artwork is yet another tribute – to HR Giger, whose spirit strongly permeated the aesthetics 80’s metal, and about whose passing I learnt, while staying with the guys in Rio.”
Get your ass in gear and pre-order the album at this location!
