Today we’re presenting one of the most intense, most wholly absorbing, and most uncomfortable audio-visual experiences we’ve encountered this year. The song itself is overpowering, and shattering. The video magnifies that experience, like turning up the dial on electrodes in your spine that are already delivering tremendous voltage.
The song is “This Corpse“, and it’s one of seven on a new album named Catharsis by the Portuguese trio Music in Low Frequencies. It will be released on December 8th by Raging Planet Records.
The new album trails the band’s first one, Sowing the Seed, by about 9 1/2 years. Not surprisingly, given the passage of so much time, it reflects changes in what came before. In rudimentary genre terms it could be considered a hybrid of black metal, doom, and post-metal, the ingredients intertwined and welded together to accomplish an overarching mission reflected in the album’s title — to provide catharsis. As the band say:
Resembling the atmosphere of these past times, this album is the result of a period of darkness, reflection, contemplation of the soul and purgation of the spirits and it hopes to embrace all the heavy spirits we have within our minds and put them to rest. Catharsis wishes to indulge all the senses whatsoever, and purge all the demons we carry through our music.
“This Corpse” is a powerful example of both this ambition and how the band achieve it. As with all the songs, the lyrics of this one read like poetry — very good but very dark poetry — though the rendition of them in the song is frighteningly intense. Mariana Faísca‘s clawing snarls and shredding screams are devastating, and her performance of them in the video holds nothing back.
The music around her is dismal and vast, yearning and despairing. The serrated-edge riffing pulses like a hammering heart, amplified by hard-hitting drums that occasionally burst open in blasts, and the keys elevate and expand to far horizons, brilliant in their tones and beseeching in their mood.
As the song advances, the vocals become even more wrenching, throwing all caution to the winds, and the music’s intensity sweeps like a blazing conflagration — though everything collapses at the end, no hope left.
Now we ought to turn to the video itself. It’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Among other things, it depicts the piercing of flesh in preparation for a body suspension to come — not faked but all too real. With that in mind we’ll share here the band’s comment about the song, its lyrical theme, and the video:
“This Corpse” dwells in the numbness one feels every time you try to become your better-self and get sabotaged by your inner demons. You can feel the burden on the gloomy tones as the first notes of the guitar start to sound. The darkness of this tune is in a way present in the silver grey imagery presented here, the coldness one feels when self-doubt is in.
In this video, we try to express the agony of feeling stuck in yourself with ways to transcend that limiting force. Human suspension is known for being a possible way to overcome your own fears, and a ritual of self-enlightenment, hence force a way to reconquer the control of your own life.
In order to express it as accurately possible, human live suspension has been exclusively performed for the video, turning this video not suitable for sensible stomachs. But let it kick your stomach. All that is asked IS for you to feel it.
And, well, it WILL kick you in the stomach, so much so that YouTube in its infinite wisdom has decided as of today to put an age restriction on it, so you’ll have to click in the space below to go there, instead of stay here, to watch it.
As noted, Catharsis is set for release on December 8th by Raging Planet Records. The cover design and photos are credited to Vânia Santos. It’s recommended for fans of The Moth Gatherer, Vattnet Viskar, and Gaerea, among other reference points. For more info, check out the locations linked below.
MUSIC IN LOW FREQUENCIES:
https://www.facebook.com/music.in.low.frequencies
https://www.instagram.com/musicinlowfrequencies
https://musicinlowfrequencies.bandcamp.com
RAGING PLANET:
https://www.ragingplanet.pt
https://ragingplanet.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/ragingplanet
https://www.instagram.com/ragingplanetrecords