EP Excerpt from "White-Nose Syndrome" - Blackened Drone Metal 2021

Releasing January 8th, 2021.

Preorder here:
https://escaping-aghartha.bandcamp.co...

This EP is a single 30 minute track, themed around white-nose syndrome, a condition which affects hibernating North American bat species. It's caused by an invasive fungus from Europe, spread by people entering caves without decontaminating their clothes. The fungus grows in the noses of the bats as they hibernate, waking them in the middle of winter - and eventually killing them. This EP is meant to represent their emergence in winter, sick and freezing, trying to survive in a desolate, bleak, and frozen environment.

The awakened bats starve to death, as their insect prey is nowhere to be found in the depths of the cold months. Mortality rates of afflicted bats range from 70-90% on average. In 2012, it was estimated that nearly 7 million bats had perished from white-nose syndrome so far.

Many bat species are threatened by this fungus, three of them listed federally endangered. It's likely that if this trend continues, more bat species will become endangered or extinct. It's vital that action is taken to restrict entry into caves, preventing new caves from being contaminated with the fungus. Decontamination of clothing is important as well, for those who are permitted to enter.

Bats are ecologically important, as they're efficient predators of insects. In a night, a single bat can eat thousands of insects. All together, bats in the US provide a pest-control service to agriculture which is worth somewhere between 4 billion and 53 billion dollars.

More information here:
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/c...