Caio Lemos
Welcome to another Sunday edition of this column dedicated to black arts. It’s not as extensive as I’d hoped this time, because after finishing yesterday’s very large “Seen and Heard” round-up of new songs and videos I had to do some paying work, took a two-hour nap (I did wake up at 4 a.m. yesterday), and then drank way too much wine last night with my spouse.
Also the Seahawks are playing right after lunch today and I want to watch, even though I have serious doubts whether they’ll win. Also I have to figure out how to change the battery in the key fob for my car, and the dishes aren’t going to wash themselves.
See, I do have a very exciting life outside of NCS.
VESTÍGIO (Brazil)
With the usual daunting pile of new blackened music facing me this weekend and limited time (see above re exciting life), I welcomed any strategy for choosing that would be more intelligent than throwing darts at the pile. When I saw that both Miloš and Rennie were recommending Vestígio‘s new album Vestígios, following their lead seemed intelligent, especially given the identity of one key figure in the recording lineup.
There’s only three songs here, but each one is in the 11 1/2 – 12 1/2 minute range. Caio Lemos of Kaatayra wrote the songs and performed all the instrumentation, with a different vocalist/lyricist on each one of them (Pedrito Hildebrando, Bruno Augusto Ribeiro, and Yuri Sabaoth, in turn).
Vestígios uses all that time principally to spin heads with one manifestation of glorious guitar devilry after another, anchoring the adventures with a hefty bass punch and percussive sounds that heavily rumble, sharply clatter, and fire like automatic weaponry. Occasionally, Vestígios also augments the maneuvers with well-timed classical keyboard orchestration and pianos, both grand and haunting in their effects, as well as celestial-seeming synths.
Of course, with songs of such length, Vestígios continually uses “the rhythm section” to push and pull the tempos and the intensity to help keep listeners perched on the edge of wherever they’re perched as they listen. And the multi-layered guitar performances contribute to the pushing and pulling, becoming more and less fast and technically extravagant.
But that’s a matter of degree, because really, at almost all times the fretwork is on the high end of the red zone. I hasten to add, however, that this isn’t the kind of formless blizzard-flurry of notes that sometimes greets the ears in a genre such as tech-death.
Instead, at least to these ears, it’s more in line with more adventurous and exhilarating forms of prog, more melodious and more elegantly elaborate. The word “baroque” also keeps coming to mind, because this music often struck me as a form of intricate, richly filigreed classical music in metal form.
As for the vocals, they’re the most black metal aspect of the album, a cavalcade of goblin snarls and serrated-edge screams from beginning to near the end, when some deathly roars join in. Though, to reach back to a variant of a word I used earlier, the music itself is quite often very devilish, maybe especially in the wizardry and witchiness of the soloing.
I could understand if someone might find such long and dazzling flights of instrumental fancy to become endurance contests. But that wasn’t my own reaction. I was too dazzled to lose interest, too caught up in what was happening from moment to moment, smiling all the way.
I’ll also share what Rennie wrote about the album in a new addition to his always-must-read starkweather SubStack just yesterday:
Brazilian black metal mayhem from Vestígio coming in fast, furious coupled with dynamics. Some of the riffing is a little more tech-ed out and it recalls the current direction Anti-God Hand moved toward. Just who is behind this cacophony? None other than Caio Lemos of Kaatayra. So, with him at the helm you are guaranteed quality. This being at Slaughtersun speed, blazing riffs of Atheist/Cynic stretches and wheedle dee noodling in long form arrangements.
https://vestigiobm.bandcamp.com/album/vest-gios
https://www.instagram.com/kaatayra/
VARE (Estonia)
This is what I read on the Warhorn label’s Bandcamp page about Vare‘s just-released debut demo Teekond Itta before listening to it, and this is also what induced me to listen:
Vare is a blood-fresh force in the Tarbathian Black Metal scene, whose songs reflect the history of Estonia from its ugliest side.
In “Teekond Itta” the band opens chapters on the horrors of the 20th century in reminiscence of cruel deportations and Siberian prison camps.
Another topic is the turmoil of the Mahtra War, which occurred during the 19th century. An event, that in Estonian Metal has so far remained an almost unknown world.
These events have for many generations been fed into the genetic memory of our nation, and it is Vare‘s mission to tell us about them through their ruthless music.
I was curious about the meaning of “Tarbathian” and so did some googling. I found a very educational and entertaining interview (here) of an Estonian metal bass-player, who explained that the word refers to “Tarbatu“, a historical name for the Estonian town of Tartu, “or more specifically, its fortress”. The same interview describes differences between Tartu, a town of about 100,000 people in the east, and the Estonian capital of Tallinn in the far north on the Gulf of Finland (population about 450,000).
Certain curiosities satisfied, but also left even more curious by that interview, I then listened to the demo.
Consisting of four tracks, it presents music that I think it’s fair to say is appealingly idiosyncratic. Vare use some of the familiar tropes of raw black metal — scratchy lo-fi sound quality, caustic ear-abusing shrieks, hammering percussion — but they throw in lots of unexpected qualities as well.
You’ll get an immediate taste of that in the opening of the first song “Mahtra“, which combines distant acoustic picking and slowly wailing and ringing arpeggios that create a mournful but mystical mood. Even after the hammering begins and the yowling riffage starts roughing you up, accompanied by vampyric screams, the music sounds grim, and becomes more dire and distressing when the frantic pace slows and a chorus of flickering leads flowers. It also seems almost medieval, or maybe only mystical.
More idiosyncracies come to the fore in “Kus lootus sureb“, which proceeds in the rhythm of a kind of drunken thrusting lurch, less depressive than the opener and more primitive, but still pierced by febrile leads and those ear-ruining shrieks, and with a finale that thrusts faster and deliriously whirls. And is that singing at the very end?
Yes, I think it is, because the impassioned singing is unmistakable in the next song (and the best one of these four) “Teekond itta…igavene kannatus“. There the band return to depressive moods and a slow pace, and venture outside the confines of black metal for the song’s first half before turning up the heat. In the opening phase it’s almost like an old folk ballad, but not quite.
What comes next is a variation on the opening theme, which provides a head-hooking pulse, and then a trilling and sizzling lead that takes the song into a tumultuous crescendo that seems to spin like a wild peasant dance — though there’s still an otherworldly quality in the way some of the instrumentation rings and warps in the midst of all the abrasion.
The high trill of the lead guitar seizes attention quickly in the closer “Detsembrikuumus“, and never loses the spotlight as the momentum and moods of the song change and the demonic cacophonies of the vocals intrude. As for those moods, they seem desolate and despairing, but also delirious.
I suppose, in retrospect, there’s something forlorn about the entire EP, like sad remembrances of distant times, much as the background information about its themes suggests. But it is also indeed ruthless, especially in the ruinous hostility of the vocals and the defiant roughness of the sound.
And there’s also an artistic adventurousness on display, a willingness to step outside the conventions of raw and depressive black metal in intriguing and sometimes exotic ways. Especially for a band’s first effort, that’s to be applauded. I for one hope it won’t be their last effort.
https://warhorn.bandcamp.com/album/teekond-itta-demo
DEEMTEE (Spain)
Having already ventured into black metal I thought of as idiosyncratic, I decided to move on to something even more idiosyncratic, the first song streaming from Deemtee‘s new album Strange Aeons & Deliriums.
When I premiered and reviewed (at great length) Deemtee‘s debut album Flawed Synchronization With Reality four years ago I shared comparative references to Deathspell Omega, Oranssi Pazuzu, Valborg, Blut Aus Nord, and Ved Buens Ende — and repeatedly emphasized how unpredictable (and extraordinary) it was. The new song “Color Out of Space” is a vivid sign that Deemtee‘s experimental inclinations are still alive and well on this forthcoming second album.
To get one thing out of the way right away: The vocals are ugly as sin, usually straddling a line between belly-deep growling and gagging, and occasionally braying at the heavens. They come and go without warning, and around them the clear-toned guitars glimmer and glitter, strange and inviting, like sprites and wraiths at play, and they levitate too.
Beneath them, the drums provide a rocking snap, aided by big throbbing bass tones with a compulsive effect. Eventually Deemtee spurs the drums into a gallop, the bass sounds perilous, the vocals even more deranged, and the guitars more dire and fearful.
For those who may not know, Deemtee is the work of Spanish multi-instrumental artist Nightmarer (aka NHT) from Garth Arum, As Light Dies, and Aegri Somnia (and lots of other bands and projects). Strange Aeons & Deliriums will be released by the Spanish label Darkwoods on December 7th. The label shares this information about it:
From the very first notes, NHT plunges us into the abyss, into that black and unfathomable abyss of H.P. Lovecraft‘s myths from which you know that anything could emerge at any moment… that’s exactly what “Strange Aeons & Deliriums”, his new and bizarre creation, entails: the unexpected, the unpredictable, the unconceivable… yet, it also brings the magnificent, the unbelievable, the colossal… a sensory challenge, a brutal display of delirious ideas, an astonishing masterpiece of avantgarde and alchemical black metal that, no doubt, will transmogrify you forever…
https://withinthedarkwoods.bandcamp.com/album/strange-aeons-deliriums
https://www.facebook.com/Deemteeblackmetal