New album, “Exsequiis”, out on September 11th!
It’s now 20 years since four teenagers from Melbourne assembled under the name HARLOTT – chosen largely because it would look good on a black T-shirt. After a scorching debut with Origin in 2013, the band carved their path through Proliferation (2015), Extinction (2017), and Detritus Of The Final Age (2020) sharpening their brand of breakneck, high-tension thrash with every release.
Now, after a six-year gap, Exsequiis marks the boldest leap forward in their career. Denser, harsher, and more confident than ever – a razor-sharp sound picture built on world-class guitar work, relentless momentum and lyrics that cast a jaundiced eye over our bitterly divided world. The death of the gods, delivered by thrash metal artisans in the prime of their lives.
“Detritus… was a great experience in digging out sounds and ideas that we would have been too trepidant to explore,” explains the band. “For Exsequiis, we went further into that, but with the confidence that it would work as it had done before.”
Examples of this confidence rain down from the outset, with intro “Incipiam” acting as a guitar fanfare of sumptuous melodies that would make Dave Murray green with envy, cueing the haywire carnage of “Void.” Blastbeats and trebly guitars add a black metallic intensity to “Messiah Simplex,” while the scampering riff patterns of “Vice Borne” give way to a mighty bouncing earworm of a chorus. This song, and many others, become a glittering showcase for the guitar solos of guitarist/vocalist Andrew Hudson and guitarist Leigh Bartley, another feature of the HARLOTT sound by now mastered to world class levels, a perfect blend of precision and spontaneity.
Lyrics remain in the depressingly real world, the band preferring not to embroider some supernatural phantasmagoria but instead casting a jaundiced eye over our bitterly divided current climate.
(Photograph by Rob Brens)
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