Ash
Sometimes we must confront grim tasks head-on and grapple with them, rather than shying away. And so I forced myself to calculate how much time has passed since the last time I did one of these columns. The answer is, six weeks ago, the day before Christmas.
Countless creatures making up thousands of species are born, live, and die within a six-week span. Hell, males among the American sand-burrowing mayflies live less than one hour after reaching adulthood, and females have just five minutes to breed before they die. Let’s have a moment of silence for them, please.
Thank you.
Even thinking about what has happened to me over the last six weeks to produce such a void in this Sunday column is a grim contemplation. Knowing what I have ahead of me next weekend, there will likely be another void next Sunday. But for now let’s contemplate more pleasurable grimness.
CRIMSON TWILIGHT (U.S.)
One of the JR‘s with whom I’m acquainted urged me to give Crimson Twilight‘s debut EP a listen, summing it up as “very malevolent stuff”. I’ve been in the mood for very malevolent stuff for six weeks, getting hungrier and hungrier for such stuff with each passing day of involuntary abstinence. Finally I got to feed, and to be fed upon.
Luminous Residual Energy is the EP’s name. It was released on January 23rd by Nebulae Artifacta. It is indeed red of tooth and claw.
With admirable scratchiness, the riffing cuts like harmonies of swiftly whirring scythes backed by full-bore percussive assaults and fronted by madman shrieks and ardent yells. Equally admirable, there’s a prominent bass in the mix, whose bursting and bubbling presence materially adds to the thrills.
The richly layered guitars writhe and wail as they blister and broil, and shrill fevers flicker from them as well, but they also find moments to ring their anguish like massed bells afflicted with corrosion and to soar in paroxysms of glorious distress, even as the drums find their moments to pop and rock as well as rumble and ravage.
“No synths, no atmosphere”. So says the Bandcamp page for this vicious tirade of an EP. But that’s only partly true, because while the music is mainly like a wildfire, there’s no denying the power of the moods it creates, moods both devastating and exultant, malicious for sure but also broken-hearted, and the cascading surround-sound sweep of the songs makes those moods even more immersive, on a horizon-spanning scale.
Or, to put it differently, these 25 minutes feel like being swept up in a racing tornado of flame, spun up high with a host of souls both murderous and lost, and whipped forward as the earth burns below. What a fantastic find this is.
Crimson Twilight, by the way, is the solo project of Ash Fox, whose resume also includes Boreal, Starless Domain, Twilight Falls, and Spektral Hatchery.
https://nebulaeartifacta.bandcamp.com/album/na-2402-luminous-residual-energy
https://www.facebook.com/nebulaeartifacta
https://www.facebook.com/asombreboreal
ANTEINFIERNO (China)
There’s a UK black metal band (and a very good one) named Ante-Inferno. This is not that band. This Anteinfierno (note the presence of an “i” and the absence of a hyphen) is from China, a quartet whose debut EP La Katástrofe Anteinfierno was released by Pest Productions on January 31st. I’m writing about it here because, having been pitched into slaughtering moods by Crimson Twilight, I wanted more slaughtering, and found it here, even uglier.
The EP includes an Intro track, a clash of clanging bells, electronically accelerated beats, cacophonies of vocal torture and bestial violence, frantically warped sonic radiations, and bombs going off. As Intro tracks go, it gets your attention, and is a pretty honest forecast of what you’re in for.
The next three tracks (which include a Black Witchery cover) are, in a nutshell, bestial black/death chaos. In the low end, which is where a lot of the action happens, it feels like the earth’s crust violently shaking itself apart. Somewhat higher, a miasma of brutally distorted guitars scathes the senses and blares forth pain. Even higher still, a screaming voice fights with tyrannical gargantuan growls issuing commands from those lower depths (noxious gagging noises and grossly distorted monster words are also in the fight).
The snare tone has enough pop in it to be heard through the other maelstroms — battering and snapping and blasting, often with inhuman speed, bringing to mind the kind of percussive frenzies that mark a lot of brutal death metal.
Lest you be misled, there are detectable riffs along with the detectable hair-pin turns in the drumwork. They are all pernicious. There are also times, though brief, when the band pull back from the hell-for-leather racing, but only to let you better feel the hopeless agonies that co-habit the music with all the ravenous beasts and ruinous munitions. Here and there, the music will also allow you to bang your head, but not for long.
P.S. Pest Productions says this is one of the youngest black metal bands in China, with an average age of 15. May their future life be longer than the mayfly’s.
https://anteinfierno.bandcamp.com/album/la-kat-strofe-anteinfierno
https://www.facebook.com/Pestproductions