Exaltation Releases New Single “Grasping at the Hands of Marduk”

by Annie · April 18, 2020

Who is Exaltation?

This Black Metal band is from the desert wasteland that is Las Vegas, NV. Originally formed in 2013 with vocalist Tyler Hawn and their original bassist Jon S. It remained a 2 man project up until 2017 when drummer Ian Henneforth parted ways with Spiritual Shepherd and stumbled across what Tyler and Jon had been building.

Jam sessions happened and the Debut EP Resonating Darkness was written, polished and recorded by the trio in 2018 prior to the abrupt exit of Jon from the band.

Back down to a duo Ian and Tyler recorded Drawing Down the Freezing Moon in 2019 as a 2 track EP before picking up bassist Jason Lamb who within 2 months had learned all the material and started writing with them. Thus Grasping at the Hands of Marduk was born into existence!

Pleased with the progress they set up their first few shows and recruited David (Nox) Aragon from Draugr this past December 2019 before they sat down and recording the track for distribution.

Grasping at the Hands of Marduk

After sitting down to record with Nihilistic Mixes , Grasping at the Hands of Marduk was released on April 16th. The track was inspired by the patron god of Babylon, Marduk, who presided over justice, healing, compassion, regeneration, magic, fairness and depending on your sources also was referenced a the god of storms and deity of agriculture.

The song starts out with a melody build up on the guitars before Tyler’s vocals begin to lament to the old god. Emanating that tortured internal darkness we all posses within to some capacity. The vocal style is less classic Black Metal high screams. Taking on a lower more Blackened Death Metal approach.

You can imagine the protagonist of the song in ancient Babylon walking into the temple Esagila, beaten down by the injustice of life, presenting themselves in front of the statue of their great god Marduk to plead with him.

What I dig about this song is that while it doesn’t go into any heavy complex riffs like the melodic side of Black Metal out there, it also doesn’t just plug and chug blast beats from beginning to end and retains some added depth and dimension to the piece making it enjoyable to listen to without seeming redundant or bland.