NEW NOISE
ANTE-INFERNO
The Scarborough black metallers bringing a touch of sadness to the seafront
WORDS: PERRAN HELYES
SCARBOROUGH, ONE OF
Britain’s original seaside resorts, does not fit the mental image of a hub for black metal in the UK. Far from the Fens of East Anglia that birthed, well, Fen, or the Peak District where Winterfylleth snap their album covers, Scarborough has nonetheless played host to an influx of kvlt visitors in recent years.
Between the establishment of Fortress Festival and the emergence of Ante-Inferno (whose drummer, Gary Stephenson, is Fortress’s head honcho), the mesh of arcades and chippies that make up ‘Scarbados’ has provided an unlikely backdrop to the creation of the band’s full-length miserablist missive, Death’s Soliloquy.
“I found myself becoming increasingly preoccupied by death and of all the circumstances, thoughts and emotions surrounding death,” details frontwoman K.B., of the album’s concept, wherein Death itself tells the accounts of the various deceased. “I decided to dispense with any attempt at subtext and simply write about death from different perspectives: the last thoughts of a person before suicide, a terrible tragedy that ended the lives of hundreds of people at sea, the death and misery caused by war and atrocities, murder, decomposition… really negative and discouraging topics that were plaguing my thoughts continually.”