ALBUM REVIEW: Occulta Veritas – Irreducible Fear of the Sublime

As most people following weird black metal would suspect nowadays, I Voidhanger hasn’t really had an “off” year release-wise. While not everything they drop is everyone’s cup of tea, without question, that label is dropping some of the best black metal of our time.

One album that I really have to talk about today is the debut release of Daniele Vergine, AKA OCCULTA VERITAS. On their 2024 release Irreducible Fear of the Sublime, Occulta has dropped what has honestly been one of my favorite releases this year and one of the most unique black metal albums of 2024.

From the get-go, with sick-ass opening guitars on the track “The Mirror Stage,” the release shows early on the level of unreal songwriting on offer here.

The only way I can describe the sound is that it’s a perfect balance of I Voidhanger-style weirdness with some almost mathcore tinges (probably from Occulta’s background playing in Noise Trail Immersion), mixed in with some truly fucked-up pensive black metal. But every song has dope riffs. Every pivot or weird direction it goes in finds a perfect balance between chaotic and tasteful. The vocals are agonized in this really specific way. The bass and guitar interplay is mind-breaking. Honestly, just so good. If you fuck with Ulcerate/Krallice, I guarantee you’ll love this.

It kind of occurred to me while listening that this feels like what one-man BM projects are like when you aren’t a genre purist and make it way more about projecting yourself into a genre rather than the other way around (which I high-key fuck with). I get the vibe that this person grew up on a lot of different music and ended up making something that feels like a very ambitious attempt to purely make what they want to make.

Concept-wise, this album has a real sense of exploring your own inner psyche put to tape. I think Occulta is big into the psychologist Jacques Lacan, so it’s interesting hearing them translate what they feel internally into this beautiful chaotic mess. It almost feels elegant and refined, though, in terms of how it presents that. It’s not a clusterfuck of nonsense; it’s like it exists on a hyper-specific plane or wavelength that listeners will only ever get a certain percentage of.

So, I’ve been compiling my end-of-year album-of-the-year list recently (look out for that in a few weeks). Without question, Irreducible is in the top 5. Occulta, if you’re reading this, please don’t make this a one-off thing. This sort of vibe—sad AVBM—is one of the hyper-specific sounds in black metal that I really love, and I really want to hear more from this project.