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! ! ! ! !
Artist......: Tarask
Album.......: Sitra ahra
Year........: 2026
Genre.......: Black Metal
Type........: Album
Label.......: Antiq Records
Language....: FR
Source......: WEB/FLAC (16bit)
Quality.....: 894kbps / 44.1 kHz / Stereo
Tracks......: 6 tracks
Playtime....: 00:44:50
Size........: 287.7 MiB
R.Date......: 2026-06-15
S.Date......: 2026-04-07
Url.........: https://open.qobuz.com/album/jxlxtbtidvnq0
01. Evocation I 9:26
02. Evocation II 6:07
03. Evocation III 7:32
04. Evocation IV 7:18
05. Evocation V 6:13
06. Evocation VI 8:15
There are certainties in the world of underground Black
Metal - isolation, atmosphere, and the unwavering
conviction of those who carve their art entirely alone.
Throw on Pharus Morti, Tarask's debut, and the
fingerprints are instantly recognisable: a project of
absolute creative sovereignty, channelling Lovecraftian
dread through a protagonist drowning in the rot of a
corrupted industrial city. It is there from the first
note - in droves - and it makes no effort to conceal
itself. Why should it? It is literally the lifeblood of
this music. And so too its architect: the solitary
French visionary behind Tarask, who like a quietly
devastating force operating just outside the periphery
of mainstream Metal, has constructed one of the most
compelling sequential narratives the Black Metal
underground has produced in years.
Sitra Ahra - meaning 'the other side' in Kabbalistic
tradition - is Tarask's second full-length, and it picks
up precisely where Pharus Morti concluded. The
protagonist, having barely survived the cursed city's
grasp, finds himself expelled from it - broken,
corrupted, and irreparably alone. The city succeeded in
its absorption. Now, stripped of everything, the descent
turns inward. What follows across six tracks - each
simply titled Evocation - is less an album in the
conventional sense and more a sequence of rites, each
one pulling the listener further into something that
cannot be shaken off. It is black metal as ceremony, and
it is utterly devastating in every measure.
Released April 7th, 2026, through Antiq Records, Sitra
Ahra arrives as one of those records that demands total
surrender. This is not music designed for background
consumption - it is music built to consume you in
return. The thematic bones are formidable: a critique of
conformity, consumerism, and the spiritual wreckage of
modern life forms the backdrop, but Tarask's real
preoccupation is the interior collapse of a man with
nothing left to hold onto. The turn toward the occult in
the album's final stages is the last available rope -
not liberation but necessity. The more you listen to
this album, the more you get from it. I've gone to bed
thinking of it and woken up wanting to play it again,
which for a Black Metal record of this density, is as
powerful an endorsement as I can give.
The album opens not with a warning shot but with a
detonation. Evocation I establishes immediately that
Sitra Ahra is an album of enormous intent and
unflinching purpose - a storm front arriving without so
much as a moment's hesitation. The riff structure is
labyrinthine, the production cavernous, and from the
very first thirty seconds, you understand that this
material is operating on an entirely different level. It
is the track that announces itself and what is to follow
and does so with the full weight of that responsibility
on its shoulders. Full of intent and absolutely
plentiful in atmosphere, it is a ferocious and
compelling opening statement.
Where the opener established dominance through sheer
force, Evocation II turns the screw through texture and
tension. This is the first head-turning moment of the
record - such an earworm in its melodic construction,
burrowing beneath the surface with the kind of
persistent, almost insidious quality that characterises
the very best underground Black Metal. The track feels
purposeful and personal, as though every riff is being
drawn from somewhere genuine rather than simply
assembled for effect. It is sharp, ferocious, and yet
never without that emotional thread that gives Tarask
its profound and lasting resonance.
If Evocation III were a restaurant, I would be throwing
Michelin stars at it. The songwriting and structural
architecture here is the album's first real hint at
genuine reflection - the compositional content begins to
pull inward, and the tones and riff structures that
emerge feel like an incredibly personal confession
rendered in distortion and blast beats. It is also the
point where the record begins to feel genuinely
autobiographical, where the protagonist's disintegration
stops feeling conceptual and starts feeling
devastatingly real. This section of the album, if it
were a gateway into Tarask's world for a new listener,
would not be a bad place to start.
And then everything shifts. Evocation IV is the album's
great pivot - a passage of bare-boned acoustic guitar
and hushed female vocals that settle over the record
like smoke over still water. The voices feel adrift,
reaching back toward a world the protagonist can no
longer access. It is a rare and genuinely brave moment
of fragility from a release that has dealt almost
exclusively in ferocity and weight. The contrast works
because both extremes are committed to with total
conviction - this centrepiece stands as the kind of
thing that stays with you long after the needle lifts.
Quiet, disarming, and deeply haunting, it is the album's
most unexpected and perhaps most powerful passage.
The calm of Evocation IV makes what follows all the more
punishing. Evocation V hauls everything back into the
dark with unapologetic ferocity - as though the respite
was a trap you walked straight into. This is
quintessential Tarask: the kind of track that grabs you
by the collar and refuses to let go. It carries the
weight of the album's closing sequence with unflinching
purpose, managing to keep its fire and its freshness
simultaneously, which for black metal of this density is
no small achievement. There is certainly a formula at
work here - but it is one wielded with total conviction.
And then there is Evocation VI. It fires through as the
album's closing statement and the gravity of what you
are hearing hits you like a sledgehammer. This is where
the protagonist's surrender to the occult becomes
irrevocable, where the two-album narrative locks shut
with devastating coherence. For die-hard listeners, the
emotional weight is considerable - but the alternative
reading is not despair but completion. Tarask has told
this story exactly as it needed to be told, and this is
where it ends: on its own terms, without apology, and
without compromise. That is as it should be.
Sitra Ahra makes certain there is no longer any room for
doubt about where Tarask sits in the contemporary Black
Metal conversation. Six evocations, six distinct
emotional registers, and a narrative architecture of
such coherence and ambition that it puts the vast
majority of full-length records to shame. This is music
built with total purpose, and it rewards every ounce of
attention you give it. The underground is already taking
notice. It is time the wider world followed. Do not miss
it.