SHADES OF BLACK: SEA MOSQUITO, NINKHARSAG

After failing to write anything this usual Sunday column for the last two Sundays I was really determined to get one finished this week, and to make it extra-large. But then I had some unexpected family activities this weekend which shoved that plan into the ditch.

Consequently, this column isn’t extra-large, it’s extra-short. Apart from the usual desire to help spread the word about worthy music, I’m mainly doing this (quickly) to avoid three Sundays of failure in a row.

SEA MOSQUITO (UK)

I discovered the music of Sea Mosquito through their 2021 EP, Fire, Magic & Venom (four other EPs and a split had preceded that one). It was just a single 23-minute song. I spilled a lot of words about it here, ending with these:

“The song is absolutely, stunningly, mad. It makes you quiver and dance like a puppet on a string in a hellish theater, manipulated by a team of demon princes. (Given more time, I would come up with a dozen more metaphors, but maybe the song title says all that needs to be said.) It left me wide-eyed and jaw-dropped.”

With that experience as the backdrop, it should come as no surprise that I got excited when I learned that Sea Mosquito have a debut album coming our way next month. Entitled Igitur, it’s a musical narrative that comes with a 50+ page paperback book that presents the short story which forms the narrative, complete with original art and illustrations. What is it about?

Well, it seems to present an alternate reality for the first year of the covid pandemic in London. Here’s what appears on the album’s Bandcamp page:

Between 17.03.2021 and 02.08.2022 contact between London and the outside world was cut.
All forms of communication, both electronic and physical, were disabled, including transport via road, air and the river Thames.

Agents who attempted to enter the area were unable to do so. They walked until exhaustion without making any visible progress. Several described a feeling of being lost or “walking without reaching anywhere.” Civilians who evaded the security perimeter to attempt the journey elicited similar statements upon their return.

Due to the scarcity of drone and satellite imagery on account of static interference, illustrations have been provided by Specimen #09. Specimen #09 is an individual in our custody who has provided pivotal intelligence through his drawings. He claims to depict visions of people, events and phenomena relating to the incident. So far, his intelligence has not been in doubt.

As for the music itself, so far we have streams of the album’s first three tracks — “End“, “Those Vanished Things“, and “The Dagger of Abraham” — with eight more to come.

That first track may suggest the ending of time as it existed before Match 17, 2021. Or maybe it’s the end of the events narrated by the album, which then functions as a flashback. Either way, it’s a collage of strange and unsettling ambient sensations surrounding the deep lo-frequency throbs and spoken words too distorted for me to decipher (along with scary howls in the distance).

With a pause, the sound of “Those Vanished Things” begins to swell into a swarm of abrasive fretwork-fevers, bomb-like detonations, hideous roars, and ghastly screams. The detonations come faster, the snare picks up a rhythm (along with clacking beats across the channels), and those voices become cacophonous.

The grooves briefly vanish, yielding to a morass of screaming and whining guitars, and then notes that frantically dart and pulse in a display of lunacy. Big booming beats and those clacking strikes again set the heavy-grooved cadence as the music swirls and sears around nightmare voices.

That track moves right into “The Dagger of Abraham“, announced by rapidly quivering fretwork. At last, all the building tension spills over into light-speed percussive munitions and crazed fretwork contortions, followed by more megaton grooves and sounds of writhing ecstasy. Wailing ethereal tones waft in the upper reaches while the bombs drop again and the monstrous voices scream and mutter.

At the end of that song you can tell Sea Mosquito are about to segue into the next phase of the tale, and at this point I’m very eager to see where it leads. Once again, it sounds like the band have become no more orthodox in their formulation of black metal than they were before, but now they’re using their unusual alchemies in service of a freakish and frightening story (and I look forward to reading it too).

P.S. I saw a post on Sea Mosquito‘s Facebook page that included a photograph of a stack of novels that Sea Mosquito say influenced their new album. The titles of the books in that stack are: Frankenstein, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, Crime and Punishment, Faust, Paradise Lost, and Inferno.

Igitur is set for release by Onism Productions on November 3rd.

https://onismproductions.bandcamp.com/album/igitur
https://www.facebook.com/seamosquitoband

 

 

NINKHARSAG (UK)

Staying within the confines of the Emerald Isles, I’m now turning to (and ending this too-brief column with) a brand new song from Ninkharsag‘s new EP The Black Swords of Winter.

That song, “Beneath the Cloak of Nightfall“, arrived this morning. It sets the stage with momentous drumming and a soaring amalgam of guitars and keys that simultaneously creates sensations of splendor and despair.

The song soon becomes bellicose, as the drums mercilessly hammer, goblin voices viciously snarl (sometimes in a horrid chorus), and the music manically swirls and quivers, creating an exhilarating pageant of madness.

Ninkharsag continue operating on a grand scale throughout, but make room for a weird, wailing and warping solo with sorcerous properties, as well as head-long gallops, further abundant doses of wild fretwork and entrancing melody, and theatrical vocal expressions. They even throw in some imperiously sinister heavy metal riffing that will get heads moving.

The Black Swords of Winter will be released by Vendetta Records. I’m not sure when.

https://vendetta-records.com
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com

https://www.ninkharsag.com
https://www.facebook.com/Ninkharsagblackmetal
https://www.instagram.com/ninkharsagofficial
https://ninkharsag.bandcamp.com