Masked Dead Records & Sulphur Music Premiere Compilation Album ‘Voces Antiqui Sanguinis’

Since it became popular in the 1970s, one of the most special components of metal is that it has a way of bringing people together. There’s a community within the genre and no matter how different the members may be, that community tends to be quite close-knit.

Well, community and metal have joined forces in a big way thanks to Masked Dead Records and Sulphur Music. The two labels have brought together four of Italy’s finest black metal bands for the new compilation album Voces Antiqui Sanguinis. Officially due for release on Halloween, the album features two new tracks by each band. It is exclusively attached to the Sulphur Fanzine special issue, Linguas Diaboli. This special issue is entirely dedicated to dialect and indigenous Italian languages in black metal music.

With an exclusive statement on the release of the record, Masked Dead Records states:

“Italy’s culture is rich with different dialects and languages. Even within a range of 50 km, you can find multiple and almost exclusive dialects, accents and phonetics. Then there is Sardinian, an isle with its own, autochthonous language. We gathered four Italian black metal bands whose peculiarity is the dialectal lyrics; of course, from different areas of the north of Italy, and made of it a split record.”

What’s really special about this compilation is, at the same time, how similar and different each band is. STRJA performs in Veronese, the dialect language of Verona. TICINUM performs in Pavese, the dialect language of Pavia. KRE^U performs in Barbaricino, the native language of Barbagia in the region of Sardinia. Finally, VRIM performs in Piemontese, the minority language of Piedmont. This release really emphasizes the great depth and versatility of heavy metal music in general. And it also illustrates the small differences that we, as listeners, are probably not even aware of. This is a truly special release that shows the power of metal in bringing regions, cultures, and people together.

Voces Antiqui Sanguinis Track Listing:

1. Strja – Instrià
2. Strja – La Siora dei Troni e delle Site
3. Ticinum – La Cacia ad Godan
4. Ticinum – Pavia Brusa, la Stria
5. Kre^u – Accabbadòra
6. Kre^u – Ma^iardzas
7. Vrim – Ij Lìngher Vendicator
8. Vrim – L’òra ant el Kali-Yuga