I made a bare-bones start on the writing of this column yesterday, and then halted that in order to venture into downtown Seattle for what turned into a long night of talking, eating, and drinking with DGR and former NCS scribbler BadWolf.
I woke up very late this morning for me, head stuffed with fuzz, and feeling very tempted not to finish what I started yesterday. But since I missed doing this column last week due to Northwest Terror Fest and likely won’t do one next Sunday due to Maryland Deathfest, I forged ahead… sort of.
Instead of trying to put into words everything I have been feeling about the music I chose for today, I can only offer relatively short recommendations. The glass isn’t even half full, but at least it’s not an empty glass.
AQUILUS (Australia)
It’s a fair bet that anyone who has listened to Aquilus in the past and enjoyed the music is already well aware of the new album Bellum II. Yet there’s a chance that someone reading these words hasn’t yet discovered Aquilus, and an even smaller chance that someone familiar with the project hasn’t yet found out about this full-length follow-up to 2021’s Bellum I. Those small chances justify the attention here, because the rewards are so great.
By my lights Horace Rosenqvist has again achieved remarkable success with this new album. You could have predicted that he would, though maybe not as soon as he did, but even if mediocrity would have been a shocking surprise there’s really no such thing as a sure thing. So Aquilus fans can breathe a sigh of relief that he did not stumble, a sigh somewhere in between the many gasps that Bellum II provokes.
The music is incredibly elaborate and meticulously plotted, very much like a black metal symphony, and not only because of the prominence of violins, piano, and orchestration. It reaches blazing heights of grandeur and bombast, as well as lows of striking poignancy, and masterfully maneuvers in the sonic spaces between them. It lets the black metal beasts rage in the music often enough to send the beasts among us howling like their kindred, but those ferocious accents are secondary to the pervasive intricacy, dynamism, and eloquence of these compositions.
People can debate (and no doubt already have) about whether Bellum II is better than or not as good as Bellum I or Griseus, but not I. I’ll just sigh and gasp and remain grateful that Aquilus forges on, still operating high up in such rarified air.
https://aquilus.bandcamp.com/album/bellum-ii
https://www.facebook.com/AquilusMusic/
OPPRESS. (UK)
Imagining you spending quality time with Aquilus and then moving right into this next album brings a fiendish smile to my face. It’s not an easy transition, more like reaching the next crest on a gorgeous mountain highway only to find the road has suddenly been replaced on the downslope by fractured pavement and jagged boulders, with toothsome red-eyed things jumping at your vehicle from all directions. The experience will get your heart hammering in a different way and your mind scrambled like eggs in a hot pan.
Some hint of this (actually a very strong hint) comes from the name of the new album by this UK band, now a full band rather than a one-man project: The Subtle Art of Turning Gold into Shit. To be honest, with a name like that I had no power to resist listening, and I’m very glad resistance was futile, because this album proved to be a demented and dazzling surprise.
On the one hand, the album is effective as a sequence of savage and abrasive assaults, packed with full-riot drumming, wholly deranged, fang-gnashing and throat-shredding vocals, and brazen, blaring, and flesh-cutting riffage, presented with a “garage band” production that gives it immediacy and authenticity, very much as if it was recorded live (and maybe it was).
On the other hand, the music is also a full-tilt whirligig, except even less predictable than a carnival ride and far more hellish. The compositions are intricate, elaborate, given to sudden changes in tempo and mood, and prone to dissonance and discord. While the production isn’t slick and shined-up, it’s clear enough that you can easily notice the wild and sometimes hallucinatory cavorting of every instrument, which proves to be relentlessly adventurous, technically impressive, and so mind-bending that it becomes transfixing. (I confess that at times I thought of it as a black-metal version of free jazz.)
Moreover, as generally crazed, improvisational-seeming, and often macabre as the songs are, each of them has its own peculiar personality, like the fascinating but frightening inhabitants of a bestiary asylum — and the relentlessly bizarre changes in the vocals help bring them to startling life.
Along with songs named “Spoon Fed From Heaven’s Chamber Pot“, “Rotisserie Christ“, and “Do the Wrong Thing“, the album does include a track called “Love“, but it’s romance of a very strange kind, more like delirious lust and creepy caresses among the inmates of a different asylum (for the hopelessly insane).
If I go much further I’ll give away more of the surprises, and I shouldn’t spoil them. Better for you to find them for yourselves.
https://oppress667.bandcamp.com/album/the-subtle-art-of-turning-gold-into-shit
https://www.instagram.com/oppress._official/
AKVAN (Iran)
Like Aquilus, and now like Oppress., Akvan (اكوان) is a musical project whose creations I will always check out without much delay as soon as something new emerges. Fortunately, something new has emerged on a year-over-year basis since 2015, with the most recent release being an EP named Savushun (سووشون) that came out just a few days ago.
The new EP includes the “Aryan Fire” single from last year and three more tracks. As the project’s alter ego Vizaresa explains:
“This release takes its title from the eponymous book written by Dr. Simin Daneshvar. Widely regarded as the first novel published by an Iranian woman, سووشون (Savushun) tells the story of an Iranian family in Shiraz living under the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran during WWII.”
Consistent with that thematic conception (Dr. Daneshvar’s novel is also known as “Mourners of Siyâvash” and “A Persian Requiem”), the music is mournful as well as wrathful, both tormented and defiant, both spellbinding and exhilarating, epic as well as feral.
Once again, Akvan has seamlessly integrated musical traditions from its homeland, exotic to western ears, with the more globally widespread tropes of black metal, and the results are transportive — perhaps especially the third track, performed entirely on traditional instrumentation (identified as the tar).
P.S. For those new to Akvan, Vizaresa uses the word “Aryan” in the band’s lyrics to mean “people from Iran”, the historically accurate definition, and not in the way Nazis stole and mutated the term.
https://akvan.bandcamp.com/album/–7
https://www.instagram.com/akvanblackmetal/
https://www.facebook.com/akvanblackmetal/
NON EST DEUS (Germany)
Last year Non Est Deus released an album named Legacy in which the project’s solo creator Noise (the person who’s also behind Kanonenfieber and Leiþa) imagined how tales from the Old Testament would have unfolded if there had been no God nor angels to save the richly abused protagonists. Let’s just say that nothing ends very well, though the album itself is very, very good.
Noise does take Non Est Deus to the stage with a full lineup, and did so at the Ragnarök Festival on April 6th of this year at Stadthalle Lichtenfels in Germany, with a set list that included four songs from Legacy. They dressed for the occasion in white robes and masks, which did very little to make them either look or sound less fiendish.
Their performance was professionally filmed from many camera angles, including with a device near the drummer that vibrated with his hammering. It makes for excellent viewing as well as listening, so if you’re not too drowned in black metal at this point you’re in for another treat.
https://noisebringer-records.bandcamp.com/album/legacy
https://noisebringer.de/index.php/de/shop/
https://www.facebook.com/nonestdeusbm/