The Depths · All albums

Stranger Fruit

Zeal & Ardor · 2018

• Scores: Noise 3, Unease 3, Complexity 2 (each 1 to 5)
• Genre: Metal, Avant-Garde Metal, Black Metal, Spirituals
• Mood: defiant, haunted, fervent
• Sound: black metal blended with spirituals and work songs, call-and-response vocals, clean choral passages, industrial touches, short punchy tracks

Manuel Gagneux wrote and produced this with Zebo Adam, playing nearly every instrument, with Marco Von Allmen on drums for most tracks and Kurt Ballou mixing. It is avant-garde metal drawing on Goetia, Yoruba religion and occult literature. Four instrumental tracks give breathers before the heavy parts, and Fire of Motion and Don't You Dare sample Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey. Gagneux cited Tom Waits, Wendy Carlos, Erik Satie and Alan Lomax's field recordings, and the title nods to Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.

Track list

1. Intro (2:14)
2. Gravedigger's Chant (3:11)
3. Servants (3:30)
4. Don't You Dare (3:29)
5. Fire of Motion (2:28)
6. The Hermit (2:42)
7. Row Row (3:06)
8. Ship on Fire (3:33)
9. Waste (3:19)
10. You Ain't Coming Back (3:19)
11. The Fool (2:25)
12. We Can't Be Found (3:32)
13. Stranger Fruit (3:29)
14. Solve (1:22)
15. Coagula (1:38)
16. Built on Ashes (4:35)