EMISSARY is a Thrash/Death Metal band out of Barcelona, Spain. There are at least five other active metal bands with the same name, but we aren’t talking about them. This particular EMISSARY is from Spain, they’re into Lovecraft, and on February 28, 2025 they released their debut album, Eldritch, via Fetzner Death Records.

As the name would suggest, Eldritch “delves into the heart of cosmic horror” and sure enough there are more than a few H.P. Lovecraft references throughout the album such as “Hobb’s End,” “The Shadows Lengthen in Carcosa,” and “Where the Silent Ones . . .” Their promo material also states the album “conjures visions of ancient, unspeakable entities and realms where time and space warp into incomprehensible horrors,” so, yeah, some very clear HPL nods here. Musically EMISSARY definitely lean into Thrash with maybe a bit of Death, but there is also a pirate inflection going on which makes it difficult to take the cosmic horror theme too seriously. Pirate shanty and indescribable terrors don’t quite mesh. 

The album spans eight tracks with a full run-time of about 34 minutes. The production values are extremely clean, and the execution seems strong enough, but the songwriting never strays too far from the starting point. All in all, there was nothing that really jumped out at me on the album; no particularly crushing riffs, no insane solos, no one really stepping too far out of their prescribed lanes. In short, the album is good, but not distinctly memorable. At the same time, there were no real regrets. The band never tries to be anything they’re not or fail at some esoteric avant-garde experimentation.  

There are quite a few Lovecraftian bands in the metal scene at the moment. If you’re looking to dislocate your sanity, there are more extreme variations than EMISSARY out there who will make you question the fabric of reality. I can’t say that EMISSARY makes any serious missteps, it’s more about not stepping deeper into the fray. They keep things very middle-of-the-road with pirate adjacent melodies which I found counter to the horror endeavor.