Oath Of Cranes - the new band from ex-Celtic Frost drummer Franco Sesa and ex-Celtic Frost guitarist Erol Ünala - turn doom metal on its head. The band combine Sesa's passion for eastern traditional music - particularly the mantra chants of Tibetan monks - with his love for hard rock to create a genuinely innovative wall of sound.
Today, the band reveal their debut album The Unsung Mantras will be released 21st April via Klang Machine Records. In celebration, Oath Of Cranes have released their new single 'Akasha', the second single from the album.
Stream 'Akasha' and pre-order the record here: https://oathofcranes.lnk.to/akasha
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/qS8vNfSxLNU
'Akasha' fuses metal attitude with the Eastern emphasis on the healing effects of music, creating something much more than simply entertainment. Metal was and is survival, family and religion. It is a healer and a way of life. Oath Of Cranes pay homage to that music and those keeping it alive despite rejection by mainstream society.
Sesa comments: "'Akasha', the essence of life. The sonorous attempt of an appreciation of our mystical, magnificent collective experience called: life. To reflect mindfully and fall into what true life can be, could be. To feel it, smell it, hear it, touch it and to see it should shock each of us to the bone. The appreciation can only be too narrow."
The songs on The Unsung Mantras are dark and disturbing, yet beautiful and healing: traditional instruments and sounds from Asian heritage and cultures with shamanic roots, including singing bowls, horns and Tibetan monks' chants, support the powerful and innovative metal celebrated on the album. The result vividly underscores the album's Daoism-inspired concept and the band's broader cultural influences, such as the choice of Sanskrit for song titles, imagery inspired by the Sadhu tradition, and the tribute to the uplifting virtues described by the iconography of Hindu deities. The Oath Of the Cranes is a promise: good death follows a good life.