Australian black metal supergroup FAUSTIAN has released its debut full-length album, "Parable Of The Sewer," via Apocalyptic Witchcraft, an eight-track, 41-minute record built around raw, blast-beat-driven black metal.
FAUSTIAN draws its lineup from across some of Australia's most extreme underground acts, pooling members of WEREWOLVES, THE BERZERKER, PSYCROPTIC, ABRAMELIN, THE AMENTA and THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM, including guitarist and vocalist Sam Bean, guitarist Matt Wilcock and drummer David Haley. That pedigree shows in the album's uncompromising approach, which trades the more theatrical or symphonic strands of black metal for a stripped-down, filth-caked assault.
Discussing the project's identity relative to Wilcock and Bean's other bands, Wilcock has framed the distinction in stark terms: "If the WEREWOLVES aesthetic is violence, then FAUSTIAN's is fear and horror." That description holds up across "Parable Of The Sewer," with the album's cover art and lead single "Broken Better" both leaning into the same bleak, claustrophobic mood that gives the record its title and thematic throughline.
"Parable Of The Sewer" is available on splatter vinyl, digipak CD, cassette and digital formats, giving the underground release a physical footprint across most standard collector formats despite its status as a side project for all six musicians involved. With each member already carrying a distinct pedigree in Australian extreme metal — from PSYCROPTIC's technical death metal to THE BERZERKER's industrial-tinged grind — FAUSTIAN's debut arrives less as a vanity project and more as a focused, genre-committed statement from musicians already well versed in extremity.
For fans of any of the acts represented in FAUSTIAN's lineup, "Parable Of The Sewer" offers a chance to hear those musicians stripped down to black metal's rawest fundamentals, with the band's collective résumé lending the project instant credibility within Australia's extreme metal underground.