FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Black Hills Black Metallers Woman Is the Earth Raise the Torch with "Brother Of Black Smoke"

Stream a new song from 'Torch Of Our Final Night,' the South Dakota trio's upcoming new album for Init Records.

Born in the Black Hills of South Dakota and nurtured by affiliations with labels like Init Records and bands like Panopticon (whose Austin Lunn has invited the band to play his Ostarablot Hammerheart festival for the second year running), Woman Is the Earth has been quietly carving out a small but important place for itself in the American black metal pantheon since 2007. Their take on black metal is often lumped into the Cascadian narrative, thanks to the way their harsh, tortured howls and fluttering tremolo comes tempered with swells of post-rock drama and soaring melodies, but they're no Wolves in the Throne Room clones. Their remote location breeds cultural disconnect, and the trio uses those feelings of isolation to cultivate a palpable sense of bleakness and desperation in their largely unpolished recordings.

In addition to the recent festival announcement, Woman Is the Earth is gearing up for a busy 2016. The band has lain dormant since 2014's Depths LP, but is now poised to return with a new full-length, Torch Of Our Final Night. The album was recorded and mixed by the band themselves, and mastered by James Plotkin—and we're offering you, dear readers, a taste of it right here.

Torch Of Our Final Night is out on CD, cassette, and digital on April 15 via Init Records, with a vinyl edition to follow (preorders are up now, natch). Check out our exclusive stream of the track "Brother Of Black Smoke" below.

Kim Kelly is dying to go to Ostarablot; she's on Twitter.