Ryan Lipynsky is the former singer and guitar player in Unearthly Trance. “Former” because that band from New York has been broken up since 2012. Unearthly Trance was a doom metal band that leaned to the Corrupted and Winter school of sound instead of stoner or southern doom, and Lipynsky had a distinctive vocal style for the band.
The group had a large number of releases under its belt, and in its later years released three records on Relapse: The Trident, Electrocution, and V. Below is a music video for “Permanent Ice” from The Trident.
Interest in Unearthly Trance’s crushing brand of doom metal hasn’t waned, so much so that Throne Records is releasing a double CD called Ouroboros of Unearthly Trance’s vinyl-only releases and unreleased tracks and a “comprehensive” booklet.
“The music was complied and discussed between Jay [Newman, bass] and myself. We went back to our archives and even remixed and remastered a few tracks,” Ryan said via email. “It was a challenging process to hone in on the selected tracks that we did, but at the end of the day if we went for everything and the kitchen sink, it would have had to have been a triple CD.”
Although the guys laid the band to rest in 2012, Lipynsky explained that a suggestion from Throne about doing the collection “kind of came out of nowhere” and they agreed. “Many people in the past have asked us to do this kind of thing, and now the time was right. I think having distance from the end of the band also made it a lot easier, as I looked back on all that the band has done with great fondness and pride.”
The label is only pressing 500 copies of Ouroboros and will also sell shirt bundles, so get ’em while they’re hot.
Lipynsky isn’t resting on his old band’s laurels: he and the rest of the guys, completed by Darren Verni on drums, play in Serpentine Path (“Things are going slow and steady” with that band, Lipynsky said), and he and Newman also have a band called Humanless.
Here’s Lipynsky (right) and Newman at Maryland Deathfest VIII, 2010.
