A new Botanist track premiered on Invisible Oranges yesterday. The San Francisco, California-based project is a distinct entity in the ever-shifting confines of Black Metal. Otrebor, Botanist's primary member has been crafting a unique strain of music, dubbed "Green Metal", for over half a decade that utilizes drums, faded vocals, a 12-string bass, harmonium, and most noticeably, a hammered dulcimer.
Lyrical themes are derived from specific genera and species of plants and Botanist's universe has an associated lore and narrative that all of the music follows. The resultant of these elements is a truly refreshing take on Metal.
The new track, "Dracula Vampira", is one of five from Botanist on an upcoming split with Oskoreien entitled EP 3: Green Metal / Deterministic Chaos. For nearly five minutes, unique string arrangements and tempered blast beats emanate the beauty of the orchid that is native to the mountains of Ecuador. Botanist capitalizes on the innate beauty of the hammered dulcimer and captures, like Andrew Rothmund stated in his premiere, lush imagery and "emotional cascades… of organic life and death."
Check out the track below as well as the original premiere from yesterday. A track from Oskoreien's half of the split is also available to listen at No Clean Singing. It is a cover of Placebo's "Without You, I Am Nothing" that is very peculiar (in a great way). EP 3: Green Metal / Deterministic Chaos arrives October 15, physical and digital copies can be preordered from both Botanist and Oskoreien's Bandcamp pages.