SHADES OF BLACK: ENSLAVED, NOCTEM, OBSIDIAN TONGUE, BORKNAGAR, HAUNTOLOGIST, MAUDISSEZ

For reasons explained yesterday, this is likely to be the last Shades of Black column until we reach Sunday, January 21st, when I hope I can then resume.

I barely have time for this one before the iron hand of commerce rudely forces my nose down to the grindstone again, even though the nose is already ground down to a nub. So let’s get right to it.

P.S. If you don’t see something here you wish I had included, see yesterday’s explanation and then feel free to mention the release in a comment and share a stream link.

 

ENSLAVED (Norway)

I’m beginning with a quartet of videos, and the first of them is a live performance by Enslaved of a song from their 2020 album Utgard.

Song: “Sequence” (Live)
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release date: December 21st

What to expect: A beautifully filmed video featuring a groovesome and gloriously proggy rendition of the song, with soaring, sublime, and space-faring twists added by the participation of the Norwegian band Shaman Elephant. Be forewarned: lots of singing in this one, but the singing is oh so cool.

The video is part of a December 2021 livestream, and the recordings will apparently be included in a bonus version of Heimdal.

https://enslaved.bandcamp.com/track/sequence-live-from-the-otherworldly-big-band-experience
https://www.facebook.com/enslaved

 

NOCTEM (Spain)

For the second video I’ve picked one that integrates Noctem‘s gripping stage performance and snippets of dismal and disconcerting imagery.

Song: “The Pale Moon Rite”
Album: Credo Certe Ne Cras
Label: MNRK Heavy
Release date: October 2022

What to expect: Music that’s as bleak and desparate as the lyrics, which welcome the nothingness of death and its reprieve from darkness, depravity, and hate, matched with excruciating vocal wretchedness — and eventually flaring into a sonic conflagration of soul-lashing intensity. The music rings and pierces, becoming as mesmerizing as it is distraught.

https://ffm.to/noctem-ccnc
https://noctem.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.facebook/noctemofficial

 

OBSIDIAN TONGUE (U.S.)

For the third new video, which premiered at Decibel just a few days ago, I’ve picked a mysterious and mesmerizing film made by Chariot of Black Moth for the title track from a new EP by the Maine atmospheric black metal duo Obsidian Tongue — Ray Capizzo (drums/synths) (also, Falls of Rauros) and Brendan Hayter (guitar/bass/vocals) (also, Thrawsunblat) — a song in which Tanner Anderson from Obsequiae and Majesties makes a guest vocal appearance (singing in eerily quavering tones).

Song: “The Stone Heart”
EP: The Stone Heart
Label: Self-release
Release date: February 2nd

What to expect: To quote Decibel, “a moody, slow burn that builds from clean, strummed minor chords to a full-on melodic and majestic black metal attack over the course of seven minutes”. Or as I would say, it’s hauntingly beguiling, brazenly torrential, and sweepingly tragic, capable of swallowing a listener whole in its raging and wrenching maw.

https://obsidiantongue.bandcamp.com/album/the-stone-heart-ep
https://www.facebook.com/obsidiantongueband

 

BORKNAGAR (Norway)

The final video for today is one made for the opening song on a new Borknagar album, a song that uses climbing toward summits as a metaphor for the striving we do during the brief and traumatic span of time we have before Nature puts us in the ground.

Song: “Summits”
Album: Fall
Label: Century Media
Release date: February 23rd

What to expect: Music that races, screaming, toward brilliant heavens, of course with Lars Nedland‘s gripping singing to accompany the scalding shrieks, blazing chords, and lofty keys. Also of course, the song takes a detour into softer and more sublime passages as well, with beautiful soloing at the summit there before the song as a whole reaches its own extravagant, heart-gets-in-your-throat crescendo.

https://Borknagar.lnk.to/FallID
https://www.facebook.com/borknagarofficial

 

HAUNTOLOGIST (Poland)

Next up is a new song from a new band whose two members are The Fall (also from Owls Woods Graves, Over the Voids…, and as a live bassist for Mgła), who does everything but the drums, and drummer Darkside (also from Mgła and Kriegsmaschine).

Song: “Ozymandian”
Album: Hollow
Label: No Solace
Release date: February

What to expect: Rolling thunder and cascades of sonic fire that dissonantly ring; a sudden change in which the guitars gloriously blurt, blare, and glitter, the rhythms jolt, and the growled vocals come for your throat; and still more changes where the guitar feverishly trills in displays of electrifying splendor. The whole thing ferociously sinks its teeth in your neck and takes the breath away.

I should mention that the lyrics make for gripping reading, and you can find those at YouTube accompanying the song stream.

https://hauntologist.bandcamp.com/album/ozymandian
https://no-solace.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hauntologist

 

MAUDISSEZ (France)

To conclude this Sunday roundup of blackened art I settled on a self-titled debut album from the French band Maudissez.

Album: Maudissez
Label: Self-release
Release date: December 22nd

What to expect: A long-dead pamphleteer wrote during the revolution of the 13 American colonies, “These are the times that try men’s souls” — as they still do, and the souls of all people regardless of gender. The music of Maudissez will try your soul too. I think of it as black metal psychedelia and psychosis.

Over the course of four long songs, Maudissez delivers scalding sandstorm blast-fronts replete with über-dense, heavy-grit abrasion, unhinged screams, and an array of searing tonalities that pierce through the ruinous sonic gales. But Maudissez doesn’t neglect the bass or drums. The former is humongous enough to shake the earth, the latter a bone-breaking menace.

The overarching mood of the music is madness, a kind of ruinous emotional fracturing and boiling-in-oil that leads from frenzy into hallucination and hopelessness. The overarching method of delivery is also shockingly intense.

What else happens beneath those arches?

Tempos change, and the low end slowly pounds like anvils wielded by giants, or heaves like a towering monument that has begun to move or a massive excavation machine chewing through bedrock, or the tempo vanishes altogether, letting your broken mind stew in its own juices.

The dense collage of tones also transforms into sounds of moaning and twittering through the other sounds that relentlessly push your face into the grinding wheel, a different tapestry of lunacy and distress. The vocals wail, like an asylum inmate wretchedly speaking to someone only he can see. A female voice also speaks. Detonations occur without warning, and the rushing wave of radiation boils flesh.

Maudissez tag their music not only with black and death metal but with appellations of doom, including funeral doom. Well, the music does sound doomed, but not in the way those appellations might lead you to expect. They might have added “harsh noise” to the list.

Maudissez don’t let listeners off the torture rack they’ve made until the album ends. No aberrant detours into melodiousness or dreamy pauses. I admire them for sticking to their guns. I’ve also learned this from them about their inspiration:

Maudissez is an anonymous project from Paris, France who’s promoting anti-catholicism through death-doom-noise music. We recorded this first album in 3 days live in a catholic church. A second guitar track, some vocals and some noise were overdubbed the last day.

For obvious reasons, the parish wishes to remain anonymous.

We address topics like genocides caused by the Catholic religion and our interpretation of the historical event of the Temple of Reason, which Notre-Dame-de-Paris was transformed into November 10th of 1793.

https://maudissez.bandcamp.com/album/maudissez