SHADES OF BLACK: PHANTOM WINTER, AKVAN, VARATHRON, OLHAVA, A PREGNANT LIGHT, SORT SIND, APANTHROPY

Yesterday’s roundup was a very, very big one. With so much time on my hands this weekend, I planned to make today’s blackened roundup equally large, paying no attention to whether anyone would have the fortitude to go through a dozen entries yesterday and another dozen today.

When I woke up this morning I somewhat came to my senses and decided to cut this back from what I’d initially selected — providing seven recommendations instead of 12 — mainly because I didn’t think I’d have the time to get a dozen ready to go before I have to go. I hope to say something about the others in the near future.

PHANTOM WINTER (Germany)

I’m going to begin with a regrettably rare example of a great song presented through a great video, each one complementing the other.

In the video (made by Len Jäger) a girl is transported by a menacing crow-like figure into a forest where she encounters different characters doing different things (those characters happen to be the members of the band). Mostly they seem friendly, though we get rapidly flickering hints that they all may still be the hooded crow in different guises.

The song itself adds to the atmosphere of mystery and menace in the video. The sharp crack of the drums and the humongous pounding and heaving in the low end do that, as do harsh demon-howls and spoken words, waves of searing guitars that build tension, muted thrumming tones, slowly wailing arpeggios, and the slithering of exotic serpent-like melodies.

The song, “Shadow Barricade“, is from a new Phantom Winter album named Her Cold Materials, a name which connects to the Philip Pullman novel that’s being read in one of the video’s scenes. And in fact, the record is a concept album named for Pullman‘s His Dark Materials novel cycle, described as “a coming-of-age folk horror tale about a girl growing up in an unpleasant world”. It will be released by This Charming Man Records on November 10th.

One other song from the album, “Flamethrowers“, is out in the world, and I’ll leave you the video for that one too.

https://thischarmingmanrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tcm-144-phantom-winter-her-cold-materials
https://thischarmingmanrecords.de/produkt/phantom-winter-cold-materials-12/
http://www.facebook.com/wintercvlt

 

 

AKVAN (Iran)

Don’t recoil from the next song because of its name — “Aryan Fire“. Vizaresa, the Iranian creative force behind Akvan, explains it:

As stated in previous interviews, the word Aryan is used with its historically accurate definition to denote an individual of Iranian background or a descendant of the Persian Empire. Long before there was a Hitler or a Nazi, there was Iran, and there will still be an Iran long after the extinction of such barbaric ideologies.

I take strong pride in the fact that my ancestors ruled through bloodless conquest and the embrace of other cultures. Thousands of years of history may be ignored by the West in favor of a false definition created and perpetuated by cowards, but it does not mean that the rest of the world has to accept and comply.

Lyrically, the song is furious, a warrior’s resolution to take their land back from barbarians and “their blue-eyed God”, from “Sparta’s curs and/Three hundred lies”. Musically, the song is as fiery as its name portends, but distressing (to the point of delirium) as well as warlike, and epic in its sweep.

As in the past Akvan interweaves melodies that seem rooted in the traditions of his Persian homeland, and segues into a cruel and swaggering progression that eventually boils over into breathtaking incendiary intensity.

“Aryan Fire” is from an upcoming album entitled Savushun / سووشون.Vizaresa explains: “The album title serves as a reference to the eponymous book by Dr. Simin Daneshvar and is widely regarded as the first published novel authored by an Iranian woman. Her groundbreaking work chronicles the struggles of an Iranian family living under the Anglo-Soviet Occupation of Iran during the Second World War.”

https://akvan.bandcamp.com/track/aryan-fire-2
https://www.instagram.com/akvanblackmetal
https://www.facebook.com/akvanblackmetal

 

 

VARATHRON (Greece)

One of the most venerable and venerated standard-bearers of Hellenic black metal is returning with a new album named The Crimson Temple. As you can see, it comes with a hell of an album cover by Paolo Girardi.

Last week brought us the first single from it, “Hegemony Of Chaos“. There, Varathron race to the attack, riffs blazing and fangs out in the fanatical vocals, but it becomes even more electrifying when the guitars exotically swirl up into the sonic stratosphere, pulling listeners’ hearts with them.

The rhythm section shine throughout, and the clarion-clear ring of the elaborate melodic accents (all of them with an exotic air) is never less than captivating, no matter how utterly savage the vocals are. It really is a thoroughly thrilling and epic experience, to fall back on an overused word.

The Crimson Temple will be released on December 1st by Agonia Records.

https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-crimson-temple
https://www.facebook.com/varathron

 

 

OLHAVA (Russia)

I’d never call myself a standard-bearer for “trve black metal”, whatever the hell that means. I’m too interested in music that creates hybrids of black metal and just about anything else. But I confess that I still shudder a bit when I see the term “blackgaze”. However, when seeing it affixed to new music from Olhava, I suppress the shudder because their entries into the genre have been so appealing.

The latest entry is a song — a 20-minute song — called quite appropriately “Eternal Fire“. True to the “blackgaze” descriptor, Olhava send vast waves of wondrous celestial sound soaring above pulse-pounding drum-and-bass propulsion and keep the waves coming, over and over again, pierced by even higher siren-like tones. I think only cold dead hearts could fail to be moved by the glory in the music.

Eventually, those hurtling rhythms become more stately, just in time for the appearance of what might be distant shrieks, and then they throb, hammer, and growl again – but the heavenly cascades persist, morphing only slightly to become more mysterious and melancholy, though still wondrous.

Also eventually, those waves subside into a brilliantly shimmering cosmic pool of sound, backed by a rapid military snare tattoo. The pool slowly expands in scale and brilliance, and the cresting waves and screams come again — but with one more significant, ethereal, and mesmerizing break before the end.

“Eternal Fire” is a digital single from a new Olhava album that will be released by Avantgarde Music. The release date hasn’t yet been announced.

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/track/eternal-fire
https://www.facebook.com/olhavaband

 

 

A PREGNANT LIGHT (U.S.)

Speaking of musicians who create hybrids of black metal and all sorts of other musical influences, Damian Master just released a two-track EP under his moniker of A Pregnant Light. Here’s what he has said about them:

Two new songs for your Halloween weekend. I wrote these songs this week as the leaves began to fall and the days became shorter. Something about this triggers the post-punk and goth influence (though always present) to the front. The cold rain and hiding sun cannot keep my warmth from you.

At the base of the inverted pyramid, the day before the day before Halloween. In Thebes, the king gouges out his own eyes. I want to bathe in the blood and the light tonight.

The first song is indeed named “Inverted Pyramid” and the second one “In Thebes“. I fell for both of them. If I’m honest, it’s because I was into punk, New Wave, and post-punk before I ever got into metal, and haven’t completely left those interests behind. If your tastes don’t run in those directions, you’ll probably be skipping down to Sort Sind now.

But if you don’t skip, you’ll be greeted by an amalgam of body-moving beats, vibrantly ringing guitars with hooks all over ’em, and torrid screams, with one foot on bouncing ’80s dancefloors and another in hell’s fires. That’s “Inverted Pyramid”.

“In Thebes” throbs and bounces too, and it’s again barbed with hooks, but it’s also a lot more sinister and sulfurous, thanks in part to thoroughly demonic spoken words — gasping, growling, imperious, and theatrical — but also to devilish and dervish-like riffing. Perfect for All Hallow’s Eve.

https://colloquialsoundrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/inverted-pyramid-b-w-in-thebes
https://www.facebook.com/apregnantlight

 

 

SORT SIND (Denmark)

The two members of Sort Sind include M. Friborg, whose resume includes participation in Ascendency, Hyperdontia, Sulphurous, and Taphos, which ought to be enough reason to check out Sort Sind‘s forthcoming debut album even if you didn’t catch their debut demo a few years ago.

I skyggen af livet is the album’s name, and “Tomhed” is its first single. It’s a vicious piece of work, but the rapidly morphing and thoroughly feverish riffs are damned contagious.

With the words ejected in monstrous growls and hideous screams, and the drumwork, bass-lines, and tempos switching as often as the writhing and darting riffage, the song truly seems born from a hellish spawning ground — born demented and diseased, and exulting in its deformities. Also perfect for Samhain Night.

I skyggen af livet will be released by Nuclear Winter Records on November 24th.

https://nuclearwinterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-skyggen-af-livet
https://www.facebook.com/martyrdoomproductions

 

 

APANTHROPY (France)

In an effort to continue my education, but mainly for entertainment, I subscribe to Wordsmith‘s “A.Word.W.Day“. Every weekday Wordsmith e-mails me a word, with info about the word’s meaning, etymology, how to pronounce it, and an example of its published usage. The words in a given week are selected according to a theme.

The man behind Wordsmith described his selections last week as “five words that might make you say: I didn’t know there was a word for it”. One of those words was “apanthropy“, which is a noun meaning “a desire to be away from people; a love of solitude”.

I was interested in the word not only because I seem to have many musician acquaintances and other friends who are apanthropic (that’s the adjective) but also because, since covid, I’ve become more comfortably apanthropic myself.

Of course I did a search on Metal-Archives and found a band named Apanthropy. Of course it is a one-person project (black metal from France). Of course Apanthropy‘s lone album (so far) is named Monument of Solitude. It’s now a bit more than four years old. I hoped it would be good. It turns out to be more than good.

 

I got stuck for a while on the album’s opening track, “Towards Its Annihilation“. It includes some abrupt and startling changes, maybe too jarring for some listeners, but the defiantly idiosyncratic nature of the song is a big reason why I got stuck on it.

The song begins with what sounds like a very eerie classical piano piece lifted from a scratchy old recording captured on wax. A voice croaks in distorted tones… and without warning the music explodes in a violent assault.

The drums hammer like overheating pistons, and the berserk riffing resembles the brutally grinding gears of some monstrous death-machine charging across a Road Warrior wasteland. But those mangling sounds rise and fall in ways that somehow preserve a connection to the song’s opening. The vocals are extravagantly insane, but they cry out in extremity rather than rasp and scream.

The next abrupt change brings a thrumming bass and brittle picked notes, forlorn in their mood. And then just as abruptly the song detonates again, with a surging blast front that sucks the wind from the listener’s lungs once more. The final change reprises the eerie opening piano melody.

 

Maybe you’ll understand why I got stuck on that song for a while. If and when you eventually move on, you’ll find many more twists and turns in the remaining 8 songs. “Quirky” doesn’t begin to describe it.

Sometimes the music is again anchored by earth-moving heaviness, and again crazed on both the vocal front and in the riffing, but the twists do come, creating changes in momentum, volume, mood, and style while sticking both thrilling and deleterious hooks in the head.

Lest you think the album was mis-named, there are times when the music sounds completely alone and bereft,  e.g., the three instrumental songs “Dawn of the Blind“, the fascinating “Chamber 0“, and the dystopian ambience of “Rotten“, as well as the interlude part of “Skinless” and the very spooky closer “Spidelvev“, where elegant ghosts seem to drift forward from a distant gilded age.

Even when the music towers instead of lashing out (e.g., “Behind the Walls“), it creates monuments of grievous hopelessness, though (as in that song) laced with sounds of beleaguered striving. And if you want to rock the fuck out and then get scared, listen to the genre-hybrid of “Red Tears“.

Well, it’s been four years, long enough for something new to be in the works from Apanthropy. I sure hope so.

https://managarmproductions.bandcamp.com/album/apanthropy-monument-of-solitude