Scarcity (Pyrrhon, Krallice, Glenn Branca Ensemble) announce new LP, share song

NYC experimental black metallers Scarcity have announced a followup to their great 2022 debut album Aveilut. It’s called The Promise of Rain, due July 12 via The Flenser (pre-order), and it finds Scarcity expanding from a duo into a five-piece. A press release reads:

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.

Our first taste of their efforts is the avant-garde black metal chaos of “In The Basin of Alkaline Grief,” which you can hear below.

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Tracklist
In the Basin of Alkaline Grief
Scorched Vision
Subduction
Undertow
Venom & Cadmium
The Promise of Rain