Unreqvited is a one-man black metal project run by an Ottawa man who goes by the name 鬼, and 鬼 makes a lot of music. Last year, 鬼 released two Unreqvited albums — Mosaic II: La Détesse Et La Détresse and Empathica — as well as a split with the Japanese band Asunojokei. Earlier this year, 鬼’s metallic post-hardcore project the Ember, The Ash released the album Fixation. And later this summer, we’ll get a whole new Unreqvited album. Today, 鬼 has shared a new song, and it’s beautiful.

“Beautiful” is a word that comes up a lot when you’re dealing with Unreqvited. (Indeed, the word appears in the title of Unreqvited’s forthcoming album.) 鬼’s form of black metal is emotional and melodic, and it owes as much to shoegaze and post-rock as to its wintry Scandinavian forebears. With the new song “Funeral Pyre,” 鬼 crosses over into outright sentimentality. “Funeral Pyre” is essentially a seven-and-a-half minute instrumental, and it’s full of strings and pianos and triumphant hair-blowing-in-wind guitar shredding. There are heavy parts, but even the heavy parts are pretty.

According to the Unreqvited Bandcamp page, the forthcoming album Beautiful Ghosts is inspired by the idea of love, an emotion that doesn’t get explored too often on underground black metal records. Maybe that’s why “Funeral Pyre” sounds like absolutely nothing else. Give the track a listen below.

Unreqvited also shared the early Beautiful Ghosts track “Autumn & Everly.” You can check that one out below.

Beautiful Ghosts is out 8/4 on Prophecy Productions.