Recently I had a pleasure of speaking to Dødes kor (vocals & drums) from an Ukrainian band Grave Circles, and by that present this black metal horde to a wider metal audience, especially here in Denmark where they were pretty unknown until now.

Following the release of band’s 2022 EP, Pestilence and Death, those four tough men from Ukraine returned with their latest full-length album entitled World WIthin the World. It got released by Schattenkult Produktionen, and it marks an unexpected fury ridden gem of a black metal release. Unfortunatelly, just a few days later, band’s guitarist Kosty lost his life on Ukraine’s battlefield.

Tracklist:

01. Feral Instinct
02. The Last of Us
03. Yielding to the Embrace of the Ground
04. The Die is Cast
05. Antithesis
06. Mournful Will Be That Day of Doom
07. The Wavering Radiant
08. One More Drop

It’s not often that I dwell on cover art, but I find this one exceptional and worth of your attention. It depicts the severed head of a deer, infested with larvae. ‘A fly injects several larvae into the deer’s nose, which gradually grow, devouring the soft tissues around the tongue, eventually starving the animal to death. This serves as a metaphor: just as the larvae slowly kill the animal, so do the ideologies and religions injected by society destroy the individual. This concept pretty much runs like a red thread through all eight tracks of the album. In other words; they paid attention to the slightest detail; from cover art, over production (the production sounds very professional), to the song-writing that seems more mature and well-executed.

Lyrical content on World Within the World, to some extend, expands on previous themes and ideas, but also open a new mosaic of thoughts. As depicted above, it is inspired by an anti-human ideas taking place in a psychopathic universes created by the artist’s subconsciousness. Similar was the case on some of their previous releases, but this time it seems as they this time found a nice and sophisticated balance between being weird and different, while still delivering some well-known pure Ukrainian black metal harshness and coldness. Some of the tracks are also pretty lengthy and epic, done in a more melodic- than raw black metal style.

In my opinion best tracks from World Within the World are the opening “Feral Instinct” due to the very dark, yet heavy sound, then “Antithesis” where the main riff was written by late Kosty (listen below), and the final cut named “One More Drop”.

World Within the World rules from start to finish! When you know that the main goal was to break away from modern standards and create a sonic portal that leads into solitary, hateful wanderings, a gaze into decay and solitude, then you have to applaud for the success that they’ve achieved.

There’s a sincerity and anger on this album that will resonate deeply with fans of all worshippers of evil, raw, cold and depressive/suicidal black metal. Notably recommended for fans of Clandestine Blaze, Silencer, Forgotten Tomb, Xasthur, Katharsis, Nokturnal Mortum, Ascension Drudkh and similar DSBM acts.

For additional information on this particular release visit https://gravecircles.bandcamp.com/album/world-within-the-world