SARPA

Sarpa biography
Sanskrit for "Serpent," Sarpa is the studio project of USA multi-instrumentalist David Baxter, former drummer of Plutonian Shore and Skrew. Based in Austin, Texas, Baxter formed Sarpa in 2018 to pursue his own musical ideas after years of playing for other bands. The currently-unsigned project performs an oddball take on blackened death metal, sucking into its gravitational pull influences from 1970s progressive rock, acid folk, industrial and indigenous music from around the world, which critics have compared to Furia, Absu, Ihsahn, Bølzer and especially Opeth.

Baxter self-released the genre-blurring 2020 LP Solivagus and its 2023 follow-up EP Mauta Tala, with the autodidactic drummer also handling vocals, guitars, bass and keyboards. Baxter describes Sarpa's general lyrical concepts as "center[ing] around death and transcendence," each release abstractly detailing the journeys of a transdimensional nameless wanderer, with the semi-autobiographical Mauta Tala "both literally and metaphorically relating to diving deep into your inner self to seek the light through the darkness."