German extreme metallers FIRTAN have released a video for "Kalika's Tongue", the third track unveiled from their fifth album "Helios", out October 2 via AOP Records. It follows the videos for "Ascension" and "The Hierophant Way".
The band has spent over a decade in the German extreme metal scene, and "Helios" is their most ambitious statement yet. Named after the sun, the album charts what the band calls the brutal path to enlightenment — framed not as escape but as conquest. The question it keeps circling is what it takes to become the strongest, clearest version of yourself in a world engineered for distraction and decay.
Musically that theme has a direct analogue. "Helios" fuses the raw, atmospheric ferocity of black metal with the crushing weight of death metal — clarity forged through struggle, as the band puts it. The record's defining texture, though, is the violin. Acoustic and electric, it winds through the compositions in melancholic and deliberately experimental tones, generating tension against FIRTAN's intricate riffing and the abrupt turns the songs take. Assorted acoustic instruments, ritualistic chants and analogue synthesizers fill in the rest of the atmosphere.
The album was recorded over the winter of 2025/2026 at Klangschmiede Studio E and mixed and mastered by Markus Stock. Klara Bachmair handles violins and vocals, David Kempf plays drums, and the writing is split between Phillip Thienger and Christian Strobel. James Dorton of NE OBLIVISCARIS and BLACK CROWN INITIATE guests on vocals, and Christian Höll of VINSTA contributes soprano saxophone.
FIRTAN will premiere the material live on their Helios tour this autumn.
"Helios" track listing:
- Himsa
- Kalika's Tongue
- Ambrosia
- Solis Currus
- Ascension
- Wide Open Eye
- Helios
- The Form Revealed
- Revealing Prana
- The Hierophant
- Shadows of a Dawn Unborn
- Man of Iron (BATHORY cover)