Kindly note that orders containing pre-order items will be held until everything in the order is available to ship.You can pre-order all currently scheduled 2024 Flenser releases now with the Series 666 Membership, including the rarest colored vinyl editions here.
The Promise of Rain, the sophomore album of the experimental black metal band
Scarcity, is an embodiment of the hard-to-believe truth that burdens are easier to bear when distributed, a realization
Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the
Glenn Branca Ensemble) grappled with extensively while writing this record. This is a sweat-drenched album about dispersion, about spreading, about the collective relieving of burdens through shared experience: you don’t have to go through everything alone.
When
Scarcity’s debut album
Aveilut was written in early 2020,
Randall-Myers and vocalist
Doug Moore (
Pyrrhon,
Weeping Sores,
Glorious Depravity, and
Seputus) never expected to be able to play their songs live. The cathartic experience of playing something that came from a place of isolation out to people in a live setting is the root of the intensity in
The Promise of Rain.
The Promise of Rain begins where the craziest climaxes of
Aveilut end, and is the first
Scarcity record to include
Tristan Kasten-Krause (
Sigur Ros,
Steve Reich,
LEYA) on bass,
Dylan Dilella (
Pyrrhon) on guitar and
Lev Weinstein (
Krallice) on drums. Rather than building density with the quasi-orchestral layering on
Aveilut,
Scarcity challenged themselves to document what five people in a room could do, recording most of
The Promise of Rain in one or two takes, capturing the physical effort and urgency of a live performance.
Scarcity forges a completely fresh sound in
The Promise of Rain with their alarming guitar work and melodic arpeggiating, shedding dead skin and breaking ground with sheer vulnerability. The lyrics for
The Promise of Rain were inspired by a trip
Moore took to the high deserts of southern Utah in 2023. “To thrive in the desert is an act of abnegation –” he observes, “you do right by the land and receive its gifts, or it does away with you.” The necessity of adaptation is as evident in the desert as it is to the landscape of the human experience. The transformation of ideas and beliefs, the grief of losing relationships that had to end, and the fear involved in forming new ones under the grip of mental illness is conjured over and over again on this panoramic album.
Available on
Bone and Swamp Green Merge Vinyl (500 units),
Swamp Green Vinyl (500 units),
Bone and Swamp Half and Half with Black Splatter Vinyl (Series 666 exclusive variant), and
Black Vinyl.
All images are digital mockups — the final product may appear differently.The Promise of Rain will be released on July 12th, 2024.