Seven-string guitar experiments helped shape the title track of Exsanguination, the three-track ILLUSION OF FATE EP due January 8, 2027. Its combination of a stronger death metal attack, melody and electronic textures became a reference point for the release's wider sound.
The songs emerged while ILLUSION OF FATE were writing their next full-length. As the material took a separate direction, the band developed it into an EP connecting their debut album, Portals to Kur, with the forthcoming full-length. Across the three songs, transformation moves from personal identity and suffering to humanity's encounter with forces beyond its understanding.
Hayden Crownover produced, engineered and mixed Exsanguination at Crownover Productions, with mastering by Alan Douches. Crownover's appreciation for synthwave partly influenced the title track's electronic and industrial arrangements, contributing to the cinematic atmosphere carried through the EP. The release expands the band's melodic blackened death metal foundation with heavier death metal elements and an emphasis on memorable riffs.
One of the first songs written after the band began experimenting with seven-string guitar, “Exsanguination” follows a narrator afraid of losing their identity through continual change. Ancient wisdom and images of owls, headless effigies, carved trees, thorns, blood and crystalline structures mark successive stages of rebirth.
The song uses carcinization—the repeated evolution of crab-like forms among unrelated crustaceans—as a metaphor for inevitable evolution and the shedding of a former identity. Its narrative moves from fear through acceptance to transcendence. The title track is currently the only song cleared for radio and podcast play.
“Umbra Vex Mortis” developed around an opening riff intended to stay with the listener. That riff survived from the earliest version, while collaboration among the members rebuilt nearly everything around it. The resulting song retains ILLUSION OF FATE's melodic character while taking a darker, more immediate approach.
Its subject is transformation imposed by others: a person gradually reshaped by expectations, hatred and misery until they are emotionally hollow. Decayed landscapes, ancient voices, stagnant waters and endless voids frame the question of what remains after suffering strips away a person's former self.
Closing track “Soulless Chasm” revisits a song written years earlier as a slower combination of old-school death metal and melodic black metal. An earlier version had been released, but the band felt it had not captured the intended atmosphere and weight. They rebuilt it as their sound developed, particularly following drummer Malevolence's arrival, to convey the dread and frozen hopelessness of the original concept.
The closer widens the lyrical perspective to humanity confronting darkness, vast emptiness and incomprehensible cosmic forces. Individual identity diminishes against that scale, and the song leaves the EP's questions unresolved, treating transformation as a continuing process.
The Wisconsin band have developed their blackened symphonic death metal sound since 2019, combining black, death and thrash metal with orchestral arrangements, melodic guitar work and cinematic atmosphere. Their releases are conceptually connected through the Bloodcult Mythos, a grimdark saga spanning millennia. Black and gothic metal theatrical imagery also informs their live presentation.
ILLUSION OF FATE have toured throughout the United States and appeared at Tennessee Metal Devastation, Michigan Metalfest and Milwaukee Metalfest. Their stage history includes appearances alongside OBSCURA, RIVERS OF NIHIL, VALE OF PNATH, DYING FETUS, DECREPIT BIRTH, PSYCROPTIC, UADA and OMNIUM GATHERUM.
The lineup comprises King Morbid on vocals; Erebus on lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards and backing vocals; Slaanesh on bass and backing vocals; and Malevolence on drums and percussion. Isaac Rice also plays rhythm guitar in the live lineup.
ILLUSION OF FATE are available for interviews through sofia@csquared.info.
