Location: Montevideo
Country: Uruguay
Genre: Gothic black metal
Single/video: The Great Shadow
Format: Digital
Label: Independent
Release date: October 18, 2026
Upon Shadows’ latest single, “The Great Shadow,” is an advance track from Golden Flame, a new album scheduled for release in 2027. Building on the work of the past two decades, it dives deeper into rebellion, the search for primordial knowledge, and Luciferian philosophy, tracing a path toward awakened consciousness and a transition from the mundane to otherworldly awareness.
Until now, Tamara Picardo and Natalia Arocena have evolved as a unit of two. With this single and the upcoming album, they’re embarking on a new era of growth, enriching their extreme metal roots with greater mass and profundity while welcoming third parties into their circle.
Recorded at Sweden’s Fascination Street Studios, with Tony Lindgren engineering and mastering, the track preserves the self-produced raw edge and avant-garde experimentation of Melodies in Grey Scale, Modern Obscurantism, and Poetica, while enhancing them with polished layers. Lindgren’s input unlocks potential that had lain dormant, waiting to be born. The track is crisper, more atmospheric, and more immersive, with an impact that lasts longer.
The minimalism of the past remains, but the improved production increases the density, especially in the bass, which has more weight to support vigorous guitars and unearthly keyboards. Where minimalism once denoted emptiness, with each instrument representing bleakness and isolation, here each instrument contributes to the wall of sound Lindgren helped achieve. Emptiness gives way to something all-encompassing that surrounds you, creating the impression of rebirth manifesting through all your senses.
The lyrics further illustrate these impressions. The Luciferian and Promethean-inspired ideas of awakened consciousness retain their old romanticism, but this time the song suggests a narrative intended to be told on a much grander scale. Reaching enlightenment requires a descent into chaos, into a void of shadows, where you confront a primordial human state. There, you discover free will and independence—provided you can face the darkness within yourself, accept it, and embrace it without judgment.
There, you come face to face with Lucifer: the illumination within the fall, the divine light within the shadow, the consciousness within each act of rebellion. The discovery of fleshly desires and the yearning to know become the first steps toward independent thought and the ability to choose for oneself: self-realization without the need for a superficial ego. In reaching this conclusion, the musicianship has a symbiotic relationship with the lyrics—a relationship I anticipate the album will reveal on a much wider scale. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Natalia Arocena: Bass
Tamara Picardo: Keyboards, guitars, vocals, lyrics
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