ANZV – "KUR" (2025)

A Second Chapter Written in Fire and Forgotten Tongues

In the ever-growing landscape of Portuguese extreme music, where sincerity and savagery walk side by side, few names have risen as ominously, and as elegantly, as ANZV. With their second full-length record, "KUR", the band offers not merely a continuation of their artistic path, but a deepening, a reckoning, an excavation of something older, darker, and wiser than modern Metal dares to be.

From the first moment, "KUR" feels heavy not only in sound, but in purpose. It is clear that ANZV is engaged in an act of evocation. The title itself, a reference to the lion-headed eagle of Sumerian-Akkadian mythology, sets the tone: this is myth made flesh, ritual made music, and Black Metal made sacred again. In an era where extreme Metal is often consumed by production tricks or genre-pure obsessions, "KUR" rejects such conveniences. It is not interested in genre debates. It is Black Metal in its most elemental form, a tool for transcendence and transformation. 

Yet ANZV’s sound is not frozen in the second wave’s shadow. Instead, it embraces dissonance and space. The guitar work spirals and constricts like serpents around ancient pillars, with tones that evoke desert storms rather than frozen tundras. The percussion, martial, deliberate, and forceful, grounds the chaos in ritual rhythm. There is a sacred geometry to these structures, even at their most violent. Vocals are delivered not as screams, but as declarations, proclamations that carry the weight of distant epochs and vanished gods. Whether intoning in forgotten tongues or crying out with guttural authority, the voice becomes another instrument of invocation. 

One cannot speak of "KUR" without addressing its profound conceptual undercurrent. This is music that looks backward to look beyond, plumbing the myths of Mesopotamia not for aesthetic dressing, but for spiritual material. The album draws from ancient beliefs, particularly surrounding “KUR”, a hybrid deity of storm and judgment, to build its sonic temple.

This is not "occult" Metal in the shallow, pseudo-satanic sense. This is esoteric art: steeped in the mystical but stripped of theatrical posturing. ANZV walks the line between reverence and rebellion, using ancient symbols to strike at contemporary alienation. It is intellectual without being detached. It is emotional without being indulgent. 

That a band like ANZV comes from the Portuguese scene is no surprise to those paying attention. Over the past decade, Portugal has become a crucible for some of the most adventurous, inward-looking, and spiritually intense extreme Metal in Europe, from the raw meditations of Black Cilice to the ritualistic density of The Ominous Circle.

But ANZV carves their own path. Their music is more sculptural than chaotic. Where others tear down, they build, with sound, with silence, with stories pulled from the dust of empires. "KUR" belongs not only to the present underground, but to a wider lineage of dark, visionary art.

"KUR" is not a casual listen. It is demanding, rich, and at times overwhelming. But it rewards those who approach it with openness and attention. In its fury lies purpose. In its mythology lies relevance. And in its sound lies the breath of something vast, ancient, and unnameable. With this record, ANZV doesn’t just release an album, they offer a portal. Step through.