After an extended period of relative quiet my fucking day job has reared its ugly head and is howling at me again. So, this column is my way of howling back, albeit much more briefly than I would like because that beast still has one of my ankles shackled, though that’s better than both ankles and both wrists.
KVAEN (Sweden)
Last week Kvaen released the second song and video to pave the way toward their third album The Formless Fires. I believe my compatriot Sir Andrew Synn (the knighting was not well-publicized because he declined to bend a knee) is likely to review the album, so I’ll just focus on this newest song, “The Ancient Gods“.
Photo by Amanda Lindelöf
For this song Kvaen‘s alter ego Jacob Björnfot has created delicate music of mystery and menace but quite quickly launches a vibrant jolting riff that’s considerably more menacing, and then threads it with a fluid melody that’s miserable in its mood.
Augmented by ferocious snarls, the riffing also begins to burn with fevers of desperation and dismay, as expansive in its immersive scope as it is disturbing. The chords seem to moan above tumbling drums, but those galvanizing jolts return, as do those searing waves of desolate melody and wrenching screams. The ensuing solo wails in grief, providing an anguished finale.
The video provides shadow-bound fire-lit scenes of Björnfot performing the song with Kvaen‘s live lineup. The Formless Gods will be released by Metal Blade on June 21st. I’ve also left you a stream of the title song and the video that came with it.
https://www.metalblade.com/kvaen/
https://www.facebook.com/officialkvaen
VIEDŹMINY PAKUTY (Belarus)
My next selection today is an exhilarating but dark two-song debut EP named …Albo Zvarjaciełae Siaredniaviečnaje Ciemrašalstva (“Possessed Medieval Obscurantism”) by the Belarusian band Viedźminy Pakuty (which translates as “Witching Torment”).
The two songs here are “Čyrvanavokaja poŭnia pa-nad biazbožnym šlacham” (I haven’t figured out what that means in English) and “Čorny Panie” (Polish for “Dear Lord”, according to Google).
The first of them is both dismal and assaulting, manically writhing and thundering, with vocals as raw and unhinged as the raging and roaring of a rabid beast (interspersed with some pungent grunts, wild cries, and haunting chants). The song is absolutely ferocious and deranged, but also inflicts plenty of neck-cracking jolts, and before it ends the lead guitar wails in abject agony, backed by a cold and cruel stomp. There’s constantly varying drumwork and clear-toned guitar mania in that one too.
The second song deploys similar ingredients with similar vibrant and galvanizing intensity, but creates other sensations too. It’s a raging wildfire of sound on a grand scale but also injects brazen and blazing hooks that will jolt heads into movement, as well as guitar-swarms that sound viciously mad and flickering leads that seem exultant. The amalgam is feral and evil but also savagely glorious. The vocals are as thoroughly crazed as before, and the rhythm section’s work just as dynamic.
Quite a stunning debut, …Albo Zvarjaciełae Siaredniaviečnaje Ciemrašalstva is being released on CD by the Polish label Under the Sign of Garazel, though I haven’t yet found how to acquire it.
LIMBES (France)
Last year I wrote about some of the music from the debut album Ecluse by this French solo project, which used to be named Blurr Thrower. Now there’s a second album named Liernes on the horizon, and a nearly 12-minute advance track available for listening.
With the title of “Buffet Frigide“, the song is indeed a lavish buffet, and some of what it offers is indeed frigid. For example, the song’s layered swirling tones are otherworldly and haunting, and so are the high, wailing vocals.
But there’s nothing frigid about the electrifying drumwork or the heavily throbbing bass-lines, and the surrounding sounds also begin to gloriously gleam, mesmerizing in their effect and cosmic in their expanse. The singing also goes sky-high and cries out in pain, and it also trades places with harrowing howls and tortured screams.
Near the end, the complete spectacle created by the music vanishes, and the music segues into a colder and more cosmic realm — hypnotic, icy, but also chilling in other ways. It ends quite suddenly, suggesting that this track flows seamlessly into the next one. Maybe the entire album works that way.
Black metal (of raw, atmospheric, and depressive varieties) is only one substantial ingredient in this buffet. I’m not sure what to call the others. Synthwave? Coldwave? Shoegaze? Post-punk? Psychedelia? None of the above? You can ponder that yourselves if you choose to, but do yourself a favor and listen to it first.
Limbes is the work of Guillaume Galaup. Liernes will be released by Limbes and Frozen Records on July 5th. According to Bandcamp, the shattering vocals were performed by Kariti; the album was mastered by Jack Shirley; and the artwork and fonts were created by Dehn Sora.
https://limbes.bandcamp.com/album/liernes
https://frozen-records.com/collections/limbes
https://www.facebook.com/limbesmusic/
MRAKOMOR / NEBETEMN (Czechia)
What comes next is Nebe Za Mraky Hvězdy Ukrývá, a recent split release (it came out on June 5th) by two one-person Czech projects, Mrakomor and Nebetemn. Each of them provides three songs. On Bandcamp they introduce the split with this quotation from Charles Baudelaire:
“What strange phenomena we find in a great city,
all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open.
Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
The split will appeal most strongly to fans of depressive black metal, dark neofolk, and unearthly ambient music.
Mrakomor‘s opening song, “Autoportréty z Životů Náhradních (Self-portraits from Surrogate Lives)” is a relatively brief instrumental that features acoustic picking and the shrill and stricken tones of some other picked strings. Together they create a poignant, wistful, and sorrowing mood.
The music in the next track, “Nad Ostravou Zavřelo se Nebe (The Sky Closed Over Ostrava)“, features a distinctive guitar tone, abrasive and quivering in equal measure, flesh-scraping and dismal in its sensations. Beneath the grim and grieving cycle of the riffing, the drums crack and thud, primitive but head-moving in their mid-paced patterns and not-standard for black metal. Up above, the vocals sound like a distorted cacophony of pain, screaming and strangled.
Mrakomor‘s third track, “Verše Básníků z Nocí Bezesných (Poems from Sleepless Nights)” is another instrumental. It leads us forward with acoustic pulsing and murmuring, and a sad piano refrain that seems to wander and muse about things long gone. Like the first two Mrakomor tracks, it’s simple and “stripped down”, but effective in creating a dark mood.
Nebetemn begins with its own acoustic instrumental, “Zármutek (Grief)“, a mournful dual-acoustic guitar piece, and then follows that with two much longer compositions, “Návrat Andělského Klidu (The Return of Angelic Calm)” and “Bdělost Lidských Tužeb (The Vigilance of Human Desires)“.
The first of those is a powerfully mesmerizing but haunting ambient piece. Mindful of the Baudelaire quotation, it does seem to capture the isolation and loneliness of existence in an indifferent urban realm. It’s dreamlike and spellbinding, wandering and introspective, but too ethereal to manifest as the attention of fellow human beings. Or you could think of it as the song title suggests — the return of angelic calm.
The second track is even longer, topping 13 minutes. It too is an ambient-music excursion, but this time accompanied by the echoing of wretched screams and tortured wails, like a vampire starved of blood, and this time the music itself sounds tormented as well as hypnotic.
Strident shimmering and whining sounds flare above a distant and dismal keyboard refrain, piercing the mind and growing increasingly demented and distraught. When those shrill and shattering flares vanish for a time, it’s easy to imagine from the music being huddled in a doorway beneath cold grey skies and drizzling rain as ghosts pass by, ignoring your existence. At the end, there is naught but completely unnerving screams.
https://mrakomor.bandcamp.com/album/nebe-za-mraky-hv-zdy-ukr-v
https://www.facebook.com/MrakomorDSBM
https://www.facebook.com/luzinaarnebetemn
UPON THE ALTAR (Poland)
Time to wake you up again.
To close for the day, so I can pay attention to my howling day job, I’ve included a song from one more forthcoming album, this one a second full-length from the Polish blackened death metal band Upon the Altar. I was first drawn to it by the eye-catching cover art by Mar.A Artworks.
The song we can all hear now is “Jaldabaoth’s Breath“. Its words invoke an evil and demented demiurge with the power and the urge to end all creation:
This is where everything starts.
This is where incarnation of the thousands of worlds ends.
Neverending funeral of whispers and lies.
The musical narration is rough and ugly, mauling and ruinously abrasive in the tones of the guitars and scorching in the vehemence of the vocalist’s screams. The snap of the snare and the rumble of the toms keep it on course, and changes the course, while a python-like bass slithers and throbs through subterranean depths, and double-kick thunder erupts.
The dense and dirty riffing turns toward dismal slashing sounds, cold and cruel, and the lead guitar undergoes a multitude of diseased convulsions. The drumming is capable of producing muscular convulsions in listeners too, keeping pulse-rates high while everything else in the music works toward cataclysm.
The name of the new album is Descendants of Evil. It’s set for release on July 19th by Godz of War Productions.
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/descendants-of-evil
https://www.facebook.com/uponthealtarofficial/