Avant-garde green metal outfit BOTANIST conclude the sowing of new singles with the track ‘Royal Protea’, which is taken from the forthcoming album Paleobotany that will begin to bloom in shops on May 17, 2024.
The ancestors of the flowing plant family of Protea evolved about 75–80 million years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, which covered most of the southern hemisphere. Due to the continental drift of earth’s tectonic plates, Gondwana separated into smaller parts that form today’s southern continents. In present times, Protea are mainly found in the area of South Africa. Its largest species, the self-fertilising Protea cynaroides, which is also called Giant Protea and King Sugar Bush is the country’s national plant.
Listen to ‘Royal Protea’ here:
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On their twelfth full-length Paleobotany, BOTANIST take us back more than 70 million years to a time when dinosaurs ruled the planet and early forests began to turn to coal. Before the age of giants ended in flames with the apocalyptic impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, some families of plants that still have descendants today also grew much larger.
Paleobotany comes with all the trademark characteristics that set BOTANIST apart from all other metal acts on this planet. Lyrically, the band from San Francisco, CA revolves around species of plants – in a clean break from the usual genre stereotypes like Satan, dragons, and booze. Their music clearly has its foundation anchored in ‘metal’, but instead of 6-string guitars the Americans use 110-string hammered dulcimers. To the confused horror of traditionalists, BOTANIST fit these percussion-stringed folk instruments with magnetic pickups and distort them through various perverse means that range from amplifiers via analogue tape to digital manipulation. The resulting sound is as unique as spectacular.
Aural Aggravation 