On March 17th, the Danish post-metal band Late Night Venture will release their new album V: Bones Of The Extinct via Trepanation Recordings and Vinyltroll Records, and today we present it in its entirety, along with many words of introduction.
But before we get to our own words, we want to share what the labels and the band themselves tell us about the album’s conception, because it adds useful insights into the multi-faceted power of the music. For example, this:
“‘Bones Of The Extinct’ is a text excerpt capable of containing all the album’s songs, which individually are images of unforeseen occurrences with irreversible consequences. The lyrics cast their gaze upon the world and can be characterized as grounded doomsday stories about conditions, which more or less concern all beings on the planet. This gaze is directed towards mankind and its nature, all our efforts in this world – and the consequences of our urge.”
And then there’s this from the band:
The songs on “V: Bones of the Extinct” covers three different aspects of human detachment and division.
How we as humans have alienated ourselves from the nature we’re a part of. (Hostile Nature / Mammut)
How we divide ourselves from each other in society. (Armed Warrior / Hate Speech)
How ultimately we will all be detached from ourselves and the ones close to us (Reappear / Prognosis Negative)
Now for our own voluminous words….
“Hostile Nature“, the album’s opening salvo (and one of its advance singles, with a video), uses lonesome ringing notes to establish a simple forlorn melody and then suddenly magnifies the power a thousand-fold, deploying punishing drum detonations, crushing chords, and screams of terrorizing intensity.
Having knocked a lot of the listener’s teeth out, LNV then proceed to weave in python-thick undulating riffage, shrill swirling and whistling tones, and cacophonous vocal tirades, but also to quell the harrowing intensity with the reappearance of that lonely guitar, backed by ambient tones that sound like waves washing a shore, along with grim muttered words.
You know the intensity will climb again, and so it does, eventually bringing the house down around your ears even as the music begins to rise like a monument of bleak grandeur and to sear the senses with nova-like brilliance. And before the end, LNV deliver an iron-hard groove that will give your neck a good bending too.
The gut-plundering heaviness of the bass and the skull-cracking impact of the drumming in that song become hallmarks of the album as a whole. The band’s use of ethereal electronics and shining cymbal crashes to contrast with the granite-weight heaviness of the music is another signal feature, along with the titanic might of the pile-driving and body-heaving grooves, and the bay-at-the-moon vocals.
LNV also repeatedly reveal a propensity for expanding the scale of the music to towering heights or raining down boulders, and then suddenly segueing into moments of soft moodiness or astral eeriness.
At maximum scale, the music creates sensations of terrifying awe — these are visions of splendor but they’re harrowing, like panoramas of the earth collapsing in on itself or being riven by vast internal forces. At low ebb, they might bring in dark, Leonard Cohen-like singing backed by glittering and glimmering melodies (“Reappear“) or episodes of eerie synth-driven futurism (“Armed Warrior“) or spectral wailing (“Prognosis Negative“).
And for listeners who like to pump their heads like pistons when listening to heavy music, V: Bones of the Extinct provides plenty of opportunities for that. Sore-neck syndrome is a serious risk in “Hate Speech“, and the slower pile-driving brutishness of “Armed Warrior” creates a similar peril.
As for the emotional quotient of the album, it delves deeply into varying shades of darkness, not just the terrors of massive physical calamity but also the internal pain of heartbreak and despair, and sometimes they do both at the same time, the wrenching “Reappear” being a prime example of that. In addition, the music sometimes pulls out feelings of wistfulness, longing, and wonder (a sensation almost always felt when the band let the crystalline ring of tremolo’d guitar-leads surface, as in the afore-mentioned “Hate Speech” neck-wrecker).
You probably get the idea from what we’ve been writing that the songs are varied, and all of them are, creating striking contrasts of earth-quaking might and gossamer-light wonder, of howling fury and gloomy introspection. The rhythm section’s grooves are variable as well; as but one example, the kind of skipping and bouncing beats in album-closer “Prognosis Negative” provides an interesting and unexpected pulse in a song of menace and beckoning.
In short, this is the kind of immensely captivating album you can easily get lost in, with nary a dull moment to be found. See for yourselves:
V: Bones of the Extinct was recorded live, produced by Patrick Fragtrup/Wolf Rider Sound Production at Sweet Silence Studio (Metallica, Morbid Angel, Mew), and Late Night Venture. It was mixed by Patrick Fragtrup and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. Credit for the cover art goes to Morten Grønnegaard.
Trepanation Recordings is releasing the album on CD, MC, and Digital formats, and Vinyl is expected from Vinyltroll
PRE-ORDER:
https://latenightventure.bandcamp.com/album/v-bones-of-the-extinct
LATE NIGHT VENTURE:
http://latenightventure.com
https://latenightventure.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/latenightventure
https://www.instagram.com/latenightventurerocks