Gaerea expand the depths of their despair on new single ‘Suspended’

Gaerea thrive on the purging of raw emotions, but on their upcoming fourth album, the Portuguese masked sensations prove that they’re no longer just a black metal band. With Coma, they’re surfacing to the top of extreme metal.

While produced by their trusted confidant Miguel Tereso, Coma expands Gaerea’s signature sound by pulling it in two seemingly opposing directions. “Suspended” is haunted by moments of intense beauty. The band’s new single is accompanied by a video that’s both stunning and soul-stirring. But the pensive moments only heighten its crushing blows.

With its sharp and slithering riffs, Gaerea‘s previous single spiked the anticipation for Coma to an almost unbearable degree. “Suspended” holds their captive audience in even greater suspense. Like a spider weaving its web, the somber, opening guitar melody unfolds with great care before the booming blast beats swallow you into the band’s inescapable vortex. 

“I stand at a fateful divide / where choices collide“, their tortured vocalist screams as if dangling from the grip of a soul-wrenching vice. “Hell breaks loose“.

The never-ending maze that Gaerea dared us to enter during the album’s first official single is obscured by an even thicker haze on “Suspended“. But the band stay clear of any stylistic dead ends. The blindingly fast tremolo picking suddenly relents, opening up a post-rock passage that twinkles like a dying star. “No words can explain why I chose as I did“, their vocalist sings in one great, long mournful sigh.

“Suspended” stands as the first song in Gaerea‘s mantle-worthy discography to feature clean singing, but the soft shift only sets up the song’s final knockout. All at once, the riffs, blasts and screams come roaring back into the fray behind an elevated gothic choir, bringing the band’s level of despair to crushing new heights. 

The video for “Suspended” was created by Guilherme Henriques.

To usher in this new era, Gaerea are touring behind Coma later this year. The masked sensations will return to North America in November with Zeal & Ardor and ZETRA.

Behind black shrouds of obscurity and desolation, the performers of GAEREA deliver their odes in cascading maelstroms of aggression and beauty. Emerging from the age of pandemic to whatever awaits humanity next, the dark horde remains on the frontlines of the next generation of extreme metal. With an EP and three albums to their name, Gaerea has rapidly distinguished themselves from the thousands of bands toiling away in the underground. Brewing their cauldron of sound from a recipe of pounding black-metal blast mixed with a touch of harrowed, reflective longing, many devotees of the darkened arts have flocked to their banner. With the emergence of third full-length album Mirage, those numbers certainly grew. 

Gaerea met a challenge when releasing their second album during the pandemic, the aptly titled Limbo, to excellent world reception. In the meantime, they found the total suspension of interactive life as it was previously known to be the perfect breeding ground for further creation and making.  

Sizzling with ambition from day one, Gaerea may present one unique face to their audience, masked and enshrouded, but the truth is they have not remained changeless.  

As their previous album name Mirage suggests, the inability to trust what our senses are telling us could be construed as one of the album’s central themes. Rather than constrict their art to mythological references or anti-religious tropes, Gaerea instead plumb the depths of the human experiences of isolation and suffering.  

Just two years since Mirage was released, Gaerea is here, erupting with intensity, casting forth black ashes over the world yet again.  

Their latest release, Coma, has finally surfaced, marking a pivotal shift. From this point forward, everything changes. It’s time for Gaerea to bridge the gap between underground metal and the elevated realm they’ve attained. With Coma, Gaerea emerges from the underground scene, ascending towards a permanently lasting position at the head of the table. 

An emotional gateway to a dark black metal scene, a guide to salvation, pain, despair and letting go. Moving up, into the blackness that is above. Gaerea is the answer, the only answer.  

Within ‘Coma’s‘ ten tracks lies an individual narrative, each with its own tale to unveil. Collectively, they blend nuances of aggression, tranquility, solitude, and fervor. 

Boasting a superior production that threads the needle between caustic and clarity, Gaerea yet again admit their loyalty to producer Miguel Tereso of Demigod Recordings for the production of Coma. Together they created the birth of ‘Coma’, the new era for metal mankind. Distinguishing themselves ever more so, the Vortex handpicked their artist Nathan Lorenzana with a clear assignment to create their mesmerizing cover artwork. Months of hand drawing the image with a ballpen lead to this masterpiece which dipped his name into ‘Coma’.  

The beauty of Gaerea lies in the directness and simplicity found within their florid tapestry of extremity and aggression. Whether it is in the less-polished aural dynamite of Mirage, or in the lustrous textures of Coma, Gaerea is building a mighty edifice of metal. With talons dipped in the inky blood of black metal and scraped across the flesh of human suffering, Gaerea is leading a charge into the future of darkness, and all those who find beauty and power in the dark side of existence would do well to take heed.