The mysterious Welsh band Crymych are one of a small handful of secretive bands called the Pembrokeshire Black Circle, so named because of their location in the county of Pembrokeshire in the southwest of Wales, bounded on three sides by the ocean. Apart from Crymych, the best known member of the Circle is Revenant Marquis (who will be the subject of an interview by Neill Jameson and an album premiere we will publish tomorrow).
Crymych made their second release last year with an album on Death Prayer Records fittingly named Endless Fucking Winter (available here) (their first album Du Bach came out the year before that). This writer tumbled to Endless Fucking Winter thanks to its appearance on Neill Jameson‘s year-end list at Invisible Oranges. He wrote this about it:
If Voivod were mostly an ambient band when they recorded but also rooted in black metal and also had Jouni Havukainen sit in and contribute then you’re close to how I would describe Endless Fucking Winter and I’d still be off the mark. Coming from the same circle as Revenant Marquis, this Welsh collective aesthetically fell in line with their compatriots but managed to craft an atmosphere unlike almost anything I’ve ever heard. Deranged, challenging and yet very memorable, Endless Fucking Winter seemed to fly under the radar for many this year, which is a shame as it’s pure excellence.
Having heard that album, we were quite excited to learn that Crymych had followed it up fairly quickly. And it will be in your hands and heads very quickly too, with a release date on October 6th via the same Death Prayer Records — preceded by a full premiere stream right now.
The name of the new album is Songs of Sistrum. Having no inside intelligence about that name, we went googling and found (per this source) that the sistrum “is a musical instrument of the percussion family, a form of rattle, used most notably by the ancient Egyptians,” that when shaken “produces a sound that can vary from a soft clank to a loud jangling”. Perhaps equally relevant in today’s context, the name sistrum is derived from a Greek phrase that literally means “that which is being shaken”.
As you might guess from Neill’s preceding quotation, it may appeal to fans of black metal, but it’s certainly not conventional black metal. The vocals are frighteningly harsh, and the snare drum an often livid presence, but ancient instruments have an equal place of prominence, as do an array of ambient tonalities that also transport the listener to times and dimensions that seem very far away from the world we think we know.
The album’s track list reads like a ceremony:
1.Sistrum Bliss
2.Sistrum
3.Chimes of the Mother
4.Dance
5.Chimes of the Father
6.Sistrum Close
It reads like a ceremony, and as you progress through the album it sounds like a ceremony too (or a ritual, if you will). It begins by casting a spell, the first of many: The ambient tones of “Sistrum Bliss” are mysterious, spacious, and beguiling, even though punctuated by sudden crashes of momentous sound.
The tones of that relatively brief opener flow into “Sistrum“, as the music continues shimmering, sizzling, and pinging. Increasingly manic percussion portends something more wild, and the reverberation of caustic screams and ugly snarls, and a more fraught melody, also reveal more sinister shades.
The snare pops like firecrackers at your feet, but everything else sounds more distant, like a performance in the cavern next door, and it’s a frightening experience, though the album’s opening motif reappears, beckoning us onward despite the music’s other spine-chilling effects.
The percussion briefly vanishes at the outset of “Chimes of the Mother“, making space for a haunting piano melody that seems performed at an even greater distance. The snare and the snarls heat up again, along with a lower pulse, and Crymych introduce another variation in the melody, which rings and warps slowly in the tones of some ancient stringed instrument being plucked (could it be a Welsh triple harp?), more dismal and perhaps even demented as the speed increases, but still intriguing.
The song pauses, leaving just a few exuberant snare beats, and then drifts into ghostly ambient shimmers (and a few demonic snarls) as a chilling meditation.
The opening strains of “Dance“, strummed and plucked, again sound ancient, haunting, and beautiful. The instrumentation is perhaps the most immediate of all so far, and perhaps the most entrancing as well. If it is a dance, it is a slow and swaying movement, with eyes closed.
“Dance” could have gone on much longer, thoroughly lulling the mind, but instead it’s brief, a re-setting of the mind for whatever comes next. What comes next is “Chimes of the Father“. At nearly 12 minutes it’s by far the longest piece.
As you might expect from its length, the song makes its turns along the path. Like everything else on the album, it beckons and doesn’t sound like anything from the “real world”, or at least not the world we now live in. Even with the vivid pop of the snare, the music rings and swirls, almost panoramic in its scale but swathed in mist.
Yet the tones of old instruments (including the lively bowing of a fiddle and the thump of a primeval drum) come through, adding to the sense that we’re traveling through time or into another realm. Those sprightly fiddle tones makes this one sound more like a dance than the song so-named on the album, but there’s also a sense of foreboding and peril in the music, enhanced by the reappearance of those fierce and ghastly shrieks.
Another turn comes as the mood of the melody descends into sorrow. Even the feverish snap of the snare and the thump of the kick-drum don’t disguise the growing feeling of anguish and even despair, as the music seems to wail. Near the end the path turns again, and we step into cold mists once more, like a freezing place populated by wraiths.
Crymych‘s ritual ends with “Sistrum Close“. At first we seem to come full-circle melodically, as the far-away tones of a piano reverberate through the ambient mists. The song soon becomes more animated, like another devilish dance, but also more unearthly and ominous, and still with the atmosphere of a journey to a long-lost age, or a place of sorcery.
As the music slowly fades away you might have to shake yourself like a wet dog, trying to remember where and who you are outside of this album. Better yet, you might want to live there longer. Your dreams (or nightmares) may give you no choice.
Death Prayer Records will release Songs of Sistrum in variant vinyl LP editions, on cassette tape, and as a digital download. The physical releases are lavish but very limited, so if this release interests you, it’s a good idea not to delay.
PRE-ORDER:
https://pembrokeshireblackcircle.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-sistrum
https://www.deathprayerrecords.com/product-tag/crymych/