Black Katharsis
Black Katharsis was born during summer 2022, originally as a collaboration between Noise Maniakk and other young sicilian musicians (who will remain unnamed by their own wish), with the intent to explore the rawer, cruder, filthier, darker side of 90's black metal - right after the end of Noise Maniakk's brief foray into the more melodic and polished side of the genre with his one-shot side-project The Ineffable; main influences were not Dissection or Naglfar anymore, but rather Darkthrone, early Gorgoroth and finnish acts such as Satanic Warmaster, Horna, Sargeist and Clandestine Blaze - plus, the obvious nods to "first wave" sacred cows such as Hellhammer, Bathory and Celtic Frost. The writing process for a first demo started immediately, but unfortunately a series of non-musical disagreements would soon make impossibile for the band members to keep working together. By that point, being left alone with a handful of near-finished songs, Noise Maniakk decided to keep working on the demo no matter what - while in the process enhancing all the more "morbid", misanthropic elements already inherent to the project's DNA. So, in may 2024, Black Katharsis' first demo was finally released - featuring a handful of tracks co-written by Noise Maniakk and his previous bandmates, a dismal Darkthrone cover (taken from the unfairly maligned album "Ravishing grimness"), and one song 100% written by Noise Maniakk ("Flesh cutting euphoria"). During summer, an entirely D.I.Y. split tape limited only to 20 copies was printed, featuring Black Katharsis' "Demo 2024" on one side and Rotgod's "Fragments of degeneracy" compilation on the other - coming with an endearing double-face artwork and yet another Darkthrone cover as an exclusive bonus track. The project's sound, in all its bleak lo-fi extremism and its adherence to second-wave black metal orthodoxy, seems to have won over quite a few genre purists within the audience thus far - and yet, Black Katharsis (now officially a one-man project in Noise Maniakk's hands) might open up to broader musical influences in the future, favoring a more "holistic", all-encompassing approach to the black metal lore, while still maintaining a relentless allegiance to its dark, underground, misanthropic, elitist-by-default nature.
