With every bit of bad news come a little bit of good. Last week we suspected and then confirmed that Derek Rydquist had left The Faceless, who are quickly becoming the White Wizzard of progressive death metal, but that he had joined a new project called Bewilderbiest alongside Sacha Dunable of Intronaut/Graviton, Abysmal Dawn’s Charles Elliot, and National Sunday Law’s Derek Donley, who is also Dunable’s bandmate in Graviton. Since Dunable also happens to be a MetalSucks columnist, we emailed him and asked for the skinny on the band. Here’s what we got back:

Derek Donley is mixing it right now and we should be ready to post something in a week or two.  This shit is sounding heavy as fuck, but I’m sure it won’t be for everyone, especially the tech death guys.  It’s basically 45 minutes of crushing doom metal in the vein of old My Dying Bride, Anathema, etc, but maybe a little more “sludgy” sounding and probably with more of a melodic/psychadelic emphasis.  We’re all really stoked on it though.  I basically have had a few of these songs demoed out for an imaginary band for a few years now, and Derek D and I started working on them back in January.  Derek Rydquist was moving down to LA around that time and wanted to jam on something like this, and Charles has been on deck to do guitar/vocals ever since I first demoed the songs back in ’08 or so.

The band probably won’t be looking to do any heavy touring, but we’ll definitely start playing shows this year and probably make ourselves available for short runs or festivals or something.  It’s meant to be a pretty laid back operation where we can just get together and make music without having to worry about the crap that comes with being in a full on touring band.

Sounds like it’s gonna be pretty f’n fantastic, no? The Faceless made one of my favorite albums of 2009, Intronuat made one of my favorite records of 2010, and Abysmal Dawn’s Leveling the Plane is absolutely one of my favorite records so far in 2011. Yet the Bewilderbiest stuff seems like it’ll sound nothing like any of those bands. Stoked.

Meanwhile, you can check out some recently added photos of the Bewilderbiest recording sessions at the band’s Facebook page. We’ll of course have more news for you soon.

-VN