Beginning in the spring of 2017 we’ve premiered music and videos by MRTVI six times. Today makes the seventh time — but it may be the last.
We’ve been consistently fixated on the music of this solo project of Serbian artist Damjan Stefanović because it has been so consistently interesting, and so difficult to pigeonhole in genre terms (though “experimental black metal” might come closest, simply because the music has been unconventional).
The music has always been personal, and often autobiographical. For that same reason, it may have run its course with the EP we’re now premiering in full on the even of its release. Here is what Damjan has told us about Great Cleansing Come Upon Us:
This may very well be the last MTVI release. What was planned as an album with production starting in 2019 stalled as a period of burn-out and a lack of inspiration took hold for various reasons.
Sonically it is a continuation and development of the production aesthetic started on The ExiZentialist album. The lyrics on the EP deal with what seems to be the unavoidable
collective fate awaiting humanity in the near future. For all the warnings, awareness and self development we have embarked upon, our shortcomings seem to be inescapable..The EP is divided into 3 almost equal tracks. with the clearer production of the last album being complemented by more developed and carefully constructed orchestral parts. The first track features a musical quote of a famous balkan folk song in 11/8 on the drums. The second track plays with unconventional time signatures and instrumentation in the style of King Crimson, while the third seems to almost be a normal song structure by MRTVI standards..
The cover art is from an extended photoshoot dating back to 2017, a representation of the central character of the MRTVI concept, standing in front of the gate through which we are doomed to pass… (This gate is in fact one of the gates at the Kalemegdan fortress in Belgrade).
During this period I also wrote an entire album that takes MRTVI in a completely new direction stylistically. While being very much within the world of MRTVI‘s sound the arrangements are much more concise and whittled down, however as stated before this album still has no lyrics and a release is not planned yet…
Burnout is a bitch..
Well, maybe the last, and maybe not. Maybe we will have that album eventually (we hope so).
From Damjan‘s comments you already have some idea of what’s coming, but of course we’ll give you our own ideas.
Lyrically the three songs are connected. In bleak but poetic terms they describe the coming of “the great cleansing, the great ending”, as “darkness comes to completion” in our modern age, rendering us “Senseless, soulless, unconsciousness, sleepwalking animals”, but with a call to resistance at the end.
In its mood the EP’s opener “Great Cleansing I” (as we interpret it) is sinister and mad, like the diabolical musings of an addled mind wandering through its own strange visions as it attempts to make sense of a nonsensical world. The effects are bewildering but bewitching.
In its mechanics, the song begins with bursts of strange electronics, almost like propellers on a passing aircraft that flits in and out of existence. Piano chords and keys menacingly meander while drums boom and tumble. A voice croaks and crackles the words, just as macabre as everything else. When the music begins to sweep and sear, the voice rises in harrowing cries and the bass moans and throbs.
These strange sensations begin to maneuver across the channels as they weave an odd but captivating spell, a layered sonic kaleidoscope whose shifts and switches become hallucinatory, even when the drums begin to manically clatter and the music seems like eerie sirens going off.
In its own moods, “Great Cleansing II” is, if anything, even more twisted, even more bizarre, a pageant of delirium and degradation.
In its own mechanics, the song deploys warping and quivering organ-like harmonies, inviting yet macabre, making clear that our audio hallucination hasn’t ended. After that prelude, glittering notes begin to dance and dart like sprites as the bass muses and echoing ghostly wails rise up and descend, joined by jagged muttered words.
The bass begins to throb and bubble, the drums begin to thump, the vocals transform into slow demented snarls, the surrounding sprites feverishly blurt and scream, levitating the song in disturbing fashion. The vocal collage is unnerving, and so too is the music, especially when the drums launch a staggering march and the chords dismally drag.
And finally we finish with “Great Cleansing III“, a call to battle against the forces that would banish the devil’s ancient magic, that song that Damjan characterized as one that “seems to almost be a normal song structure by MRTVI standards”. This is, of course, a relative sense of normality.
The music pings and rings like ethereal chimes around a picked pulse, and the bass and drums give us a pounding, head-nodding groove. The piano makes its entrance as the tapestry of sound grows more elaborate, off-set by the ugliness of the ensuing vocals.
The groove switches and bounces; saxophone-like tones lend their own pulse; the vocals descend into gravelly baritone intonations; piano-sparks and searing waves fly high above. Other sounds warble and doppler in and out, or screech like birds on fire. Those sax-like sounds reappear, almost exultant.
Well, the grooves, as variable as they are, are prominent, but that’s about all you can really hold onto. Everything else is like a deranged dream.
So here’s the question that took hold as this writer looped back and forth through the EP, which doesn’t just cut through the boundaries of black metal but chops them all down and makes a fire of them: How can something so strange, so unpredictable, and so often unsettling be so damned seductive, to the point of quickly becoming addictive?
Great Cleansing Come Upon Us will be released on Bandcamp through Life As A Dream Records on December 15th.
https://lifeasadreamrecords.bandcamp.com/album/great-cleansing-come-upon-us