SHADES OF BLACK: IHSAHN, DÉLÉTÈRE, NIPHREDIL, ANGEL OF THE ABYSS, RAAT, DISCIPLINE

I hurt all over, thanks for asking. The result of a week spent trying to exercise muscles that turned into limp noodles after months of sedentary living. If I could get all the lactic acid out of my body it would probably fill a barrel.

Well, maybe hurting all over wasn’t the worst thing as a basis for picking the music in this Sunday column today. It led to selections that will make you hurt in different ways too.

IHSAHN (Norway)

The hurting begins with “Pilgrimage To Oblivion“, a new song from Ihsahn that surfaced three days ago in two different versions. The main version combines orchestral bombast and terrorizing screams, frenzied strings and plundering percussion, to create a thoroughly harrowing experience in keeping with the song’s title and the video’s tale of personal ruin.

photo by Andy Ford

The second version, presented through an animated video by Costin Chioreanu, is a purely orchestral rendering of the song. It had me thinking about Mussorgsky‘s “Night on Bald Mountain”, but I suppose Wagner as well. Interestingly, both videos include hashtags for Devin Townsend, Opeth, and Steven Wilson.

The music is from a self-titled concept album that’s coming out February 16th via Candlelight. Like the song you’ve just heard, the album will come in two versions, one of them entirely symphonic, and functioning like a cinematic soundtrack to the tale the album tells.

https://Ihsahn.lnk.to/IHSAHN
https://www.facebook.com/ihsahnmusic

 

 

DÉLÉTÈRE (Canada)

I put this next song here because it too has a symphonic sweep and its fair share of bombast, even though I’m not sure if any synths were used in its production.

The song’s classical elements include chanting choral voices and instrumentation that gloriously but devilishly whirls like massed strings, backed by drumming riots and deliriously fanged vocals. The music mostly levitates and blazes but also settles into times of plague, like a visitation to the black death of the Dark Ages.

The song is “Foutredieu“, and it’s from an album named Songes d’une Nuit Souillée (this Quebec collective’s first full-length in five years) that will be out on November 23rd through Sepulchral Productions.

https://www.sepulchralproductions.com/collections/preorders
https://www.facebook.com/inopiaetmorbo

 

 

NIPHREDIL (Ecuador)

The Niphredil duo of Lucas Serrano and José Miguel Santelices released their debut album The Final Star about two weeks ago, with help from session drummer Danial Devost and session bassist Alex Guerrero.

The six tracks here follow a winding path, moving from scathing black metal that embodies moods of agony and desperation to softer moments of mesmerizing mystery and sublime melancholy, and thus from ragged wrenching howls and bitter growls to somber yet soaring singing, and from frantically hurtling beats to beguiling bass-and-drum nuances.

The songs are rich in melody even when the riffing sears, though the moods are almost relentlessly dark. The intertwining of ethereal keys and abrading guitars, of gentle acoustic picking and grand chords of daunting and haunting grandeur, of miserably wailing leads and wondrous celestial panoramas, creates compelling contrasts, both elegant and exsanguinating.

You might find yourself getting carried far away in Niphredil‘s elaborate journey toward this final star (as I did), engrossed by their changing amalgams of black metal, post metal, doom, and prog. Just don’t go looking for hope, because there’s not much to be found here despite the yearning for hope that does come through. (The eloquent lyrics, which you’ll find at Bandcamp, are also worth perusing.)

https://niphredil.bandcamp.com/album/the-final-star
https://www.instagram.com/niphrdil/
https://www.facebook.com/p/Niphredil-100063754862534/

 

 

ANGEL OF THE ABYSS (U.S.)

Now for a different kind of suffering.

Having previously partaken of the works of the Texas-based Pneuma Hagion duo at Bandcamp, I received an e-mail alert that they had released something new — but not under the Pneuma Hagion name. Instead, they took a new name — Angel of the Abyss — as a vehicle for creating (in their words) “Primitive USBM/death metal”.

Their first venture as Angel of the Abyss consists of a three-track EP called Rites of the Black Moon, and it is a very nasty piece of work.

The rapidly vibrating riffs do get their corroded hooks in, but their tone is as dismal as gangrene, and the vocals equally noxious. The drumming ruthlessly hammers, morbidly stalks, and erupts in fusillades, while the downtuned chords channel moods of sadistic violence, flesh-eating disease, and abysmal agony.

Only in metal could words like that be intended as praise.

https://angeloftheabyss.bandcamp.com/album/rites-of-the-black-moon
https://www.facebook.com/pneumahagion218/

 

 

RAAT (India)

I’ve been pretty consistent in helping to spread the word about Raat‘s new releases (and the releases of its alter ego’s other projects), because I’ve found the music consistently good. Now there’s a new Raat release available to you, and I do think it’s the best one yet.

Secret Light collects three longer-than-average songs, one of them (“Ad Astra“) approaching the 12-minute mark. As always, each one of them brings together a changing amalgam of experiences and stylistic ingredients, including but not limited to black metal.

Rather than try to put my fingers on all the genre elements, I’ll instead offer some thoughts about… the sensations and feelings in the music.

At their zeniths, which sometimes arrive suddenly, the songs are breathtaking spectacles of sound, basting like weaponry, rumbling like mountain ranges up-thrust from the mantle, and blazing like blinding suns that illuminate vast distances, though those stunning crescendos seem to channel emotional turmoil and catastrophe as well as wonder. That’s due in part to the shattering intensity of the screaming vocals.

At low ebb (which is a relative term here), the music shimmers and the notes seem to gently beckon, creating haunting spells and a time for sorrowful contemplation, letting your heart drop from your throat and down where it belongs.

Even when the musical skies are exploding and rolling in waves like immense seas of flame, which is most of the time, the bass and drums punch the listener’s punch in gripping ways. And in the final minutes of the final song, when the drums are really catching your head, the music beautifully rings.

Go forth and prepare to be stunned….

https://raat.bandcamp.com/album/secret-light
https://www.facebook.com/raatzone/

 

 

DISCIPLINE (Europe, somewhere)

Sadly, I’ve got to bring today’s column to an end, wishing I had time to write about new music from Varathron, Kalmankantaja, Jzovce, Útgarðar, and Demons of Noon (among others). Maybe another day. But to close I instead picked something you probably haven’t heard anything about.

I really don’t know much about this band either, nothing more than what I hear in the music (which tells me this isn’t these people’s first rodeo) and this message I received from them:

We are a European band of raw and psychedelic Black Metal. We have just released our first demo Ep on CD. these are five terrible titles, sung in an old European dialect forgotten by (almost) everyone. Our project focuses on martial arts, sport, the fight against temptation, Mont Saint-Michel and Discipline.

The name of the EP is 2150, which is also the name of one of the five tracks. The others are also titled with numbers, which might be years or might be something else entirely.

As for the music, it is indeed raw and psychedelic, but those terms are so high-level that they’re really only hints, and they don’t come close to giving away the whole show. Here are more hints:

The shrieking, yelling, wailing, and weirdly warbling vocals are insane. The prominent throbbing of the bass is marvelously mercurial, and wouldn’t be out of place in a ’70s funk band, as well as a ’70s psyche band or a disco band. It continually seizes attention more than anything else, which is saying something, because everything here seizes attention.

The riffing is indeed raw but somehow also gleaming, and it creates a sonic kaleidoscope, capable of bending minds as well as swelling in a kind of strange majesty. It dances and spins, convulses in spasms of eye-popping delirium, spews boiling acid, and wanders like a lost soul. In the last song, it does also create a lysergic acid dream.

As for the drumming, it goes nuts but also made me think the performer has spent time in a polka band. And a funk band and a disco band too.

Hell, at one time I caught myself thinking of Ian Dury and The Blockheads.

Tell me if you’ve heard anything else like this. If so I’d like to go find it. I’m fucking delighted I found this one.

https://disciplinebm.bandcamp.com/album/2150