Botanist

Botanist stands among metal's most singular projects, operating primarily as a one-man endeavor that crafts environmentally focused "green metal" through hammered dulcimer and drums alone, with bass as the sole stringed instrument permitted. The songs unfold from the perspective of the Botanist himself, a solitary fanatic who harbors contempt for humankind's assaults on the natural world and chooses permanent isolation amid vegetation inside what he calls the Verdant Realm. Track names such as "Rhododendoom" and "Gorechid" appear alongside countless other botanical references whose meanings remain opaque without specialized knowledge, echoing the manner in which Carcass once mined medical texts for its own vocabulary. The project surfaced in 2011 via the double release I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose from the Dead and has since delivered a succession of well-regarded full-lengths and shorter works, among them the 2017 album Collective: The Shape of He to Come, the first to incorporate a complete ensemble.

Originally the solitary outlet for San Francisco metal musician Otrebor, who handled both the guttural vocals and the hammered dulcimer alongside drums while leaving the percussion takes unedited in a deliberately unpolished style, Botanist introduced itself through that same 2011 double album on tUMULt. Coverage followed from Pitchfork, NPR, and various metal outlets. III: Doom in Bloom arrived in 2012 on Totalrust Music, shifting from the concise, grindcore-adjacent pieces of the debut toward extended, more expansive pieces that leaned toward doom metal in an acoustic, guitar-free form. A companion disc titled Allies featured contributions from associates of the project, set to drum tracks drawn from the III sessions. Live performances soon commenced, with additional players joining Otrebor on bass, harmonium, hammered dulcimer, and vocals.

The project signed with The Flenser in 2013, issuing IV: Mandragora, which introduced distortion into the sonic palette, along with the split EP 1: Hanging Gardens of Hell/Ode to Joy alongside Palace of Worms. VI: Flora followed on the same label in 2014, while a vinyl pressing of III appeared via Otrebor's own Favonian imprint. EP 2: Hammer of Botany surfaced in 2015 to coincide with a European tour. The split EP 3: Green Metal/Deterministic Chaos with Oskoreien emerged in 2016. Collective: The Shape of He to Come, the first album to employ the full live configuration, was released by Avantgarde Music in 2017. Retaining that expanded lineup, Botanist delivered Ecosystem in 2019.