Liturgy

Liturgy is a Brooklyn-based, self-styled “Transcendental Black Metal” band whose yearning, energetic music exists in an uncanny space between avant rock, black metal, fine art and shamanic ritual. Led by songwriter and conceptual architect Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, who is joined by guitarist Bernard Gann, bassist Tyler Dusenbury and drummer Greg Fox, the band exists as a 21st century total work of art (gesamtkunstwerk): activating divine potencies by means of music and culture even as it underscores the contradictions inherent in such a project during the internet era. Their third full length, The Ark Work, is a quantum leap forward, a radical change in sound that paradoxically sounds more like Liturgy than ever.

With the release of 2011’s "Aesthethica", the friction between Liturgy’s multiple worlds sparked and caught fire. Liturgy crossed over to perform to huge crowds at major festivals and at art institutions, including MoMA, where Hunt-Hendrix delivered his manifesto next to a Joseph Beuys sculpture. "Aesthethica" was listed as Spin’s top metal album of the year and featured on two different New York Times lists for top 10 albums of 2011 while the band graced the cover of Metal Hammer’s Subterranea magazine. For the next two years the live band functioned as a duo while Hunt-Hendrix began the long process of composing what would become The Ark Work. In 2014, Fox and Dusenbury returned to record the album along with Hunt-Hendrix and Gann, adding their dynamic energy to the mix. The result is the first true sonic realization of Transcendental Black Metal: a musically cohesive alchemical fusion, an artistically reflexive work of theandery, and a mind-bending album that is as original as it is beautiful.