Schammasch

Schammasch emerged from Basel, Switzerland, as a confrontational black metal outfit whose name derives from Šamaš, the Akkadian and Babylonian deity of the sun. Their music fuses avant-garde black metal with ominous atmospheric layers, pagan folk motifs, doom passages, and lyrics steeped in esoteric and occult themes saturated by Hermetic mysticism. Issued barely twelve months after the group’s formation, their debut album Sic Lvceat Lvx appeared in 2010 through Black Tower Productions and drew widespread acclaim throughout the extreme-music press and online communities. Following a series of visceral, unsettling performances alongside Jex Thoth, Vorkreist, Evoken, and Forgotten Tomb, the band became the first Swiss act signed to Prosthetic Records. Subsequent releases have grown progressively denser and more conceptually daring; the 2016 opus Triangle, for instance, was structured as three separate LP or CD editions, each precisely 33:30 in length. The quartet has crisscrossed Europe repeatedly, both supporting and headlining, while establishing itself as a potent festival presence restricted exclusively to nocturnal slots.

Four longtime friends and local metal enthusiasts founded the project in 2009. Drummer Boris A.W. (Azrael, also of Cold Cell), bassist and engineer Christopher Ruf (C.S.R., formerly of Totenwinter), guitarist and saxophonist Mark A. (M.A., also of Blutmond), and guitarist Jonas Merb (J.B., likewise of Blutmond) began writing and rehearsing at once. Without issuing any demo, they self-recorded and self-produced Sic Lvceat Lvx, already incorporating experimental approaches to songwriting and sonics that would underpin their later work. Although the album received strong notices, four years passed before Contradiction, an eighty-five-minute statement released by Prosthetic in 2014. Co-produced by former Celtic Frost guitarist V. Santura, the record juxtaposed cerebral themes against a deliberate, exploratory yet punishing sound that incorporated flamenco nylon-string interludes, morose chanting and growling, and thick, rolling blastbeats. Further praise arrived from Decibel, Metal Hammer UK, Terrorizer, and RockHard GER, coinciding with high-profile support slots for Alcest, Ulver, the Ocean, and Mayhem. The band subsequently headlined select Swiss dates and secured prime support positions elsewhere.

Returning to the studio late in 2015 alongside engineers and co-producers Santura and Michael Zech, Schammasch recruited an expanded circle of collaborators for additional vocals, keyboards, and guitars. The resulting limited-edition, three-disc, one-hundred-minute Triangle was widely celebrated as 2016’s most ambitious metal release, its dense production and doomy vistas offset by pronounced melodic and modal breadth. Virtually every headlining show on the ensuing European trek sold out. In 2017 the band issued the thirty-nine-minute EP The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite, engineered by C.S.R. together with Simon Jameson and Raphaël Bovey; its lyrics were drawn directly from Comte de Lautréamont’s (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) dark, provocative surrealist text of the same name. Slower and more ambient, experimental, and theatrical than prior material, the EP represented their most refined musical statement to date, though coverage remained limited amid discomfort with its sexually fluid imagery within a scene long characterized by asexuality. Touring momentum nevertheless continued, leading to headline festival appearances that summer.

During a 2018 tour hiatus the members commenced writing sessions and captured piano contributions from guest Lillian Liu of Akheth inside a Swiss facility. Over the following year, working in both Swiss and German studios during breaks from the road and handling the bulk of recording themselves, they enlisted additional flamenco-guitar work from Pascal Dick of Ded Elk, who had previously appeared on Triangle. Co-produced by C.S.R. and Markus Stock, the nine-track Hearts of No Light opens and closes with intense instrumental passages. Prosthetic issued the album in an edition of four thousand copies in November as Schammasch toured Europe with Enthroned and Caronte.