(Our contributor Vizzah Harri has discovered California-based Bloody Keep and their debut album released by Grime Stone Records in January of this year. He wishes to share with you his considerable enthusiasm for it today. Read on….)
You must be a selenite (inhabitant of the Moon) at this point in time to not realize that black metal is probably the kind of metal that, if not incumbent to the highest frequency, probably has the best base for coagulation and experimentation with any other genre.
Grime Stone Records have a penchant for the odd and strange and there are those who would prefer their murky darkness unspoiled with the invasion of even the faintest light (or chiptune for that matter, click on the ‘strange’ link above to take a trip down a rabbit hole you might never have had the chance to know existed). With Bloody Keep we find abstractions of the acrid and abrasive type yet subscribed purely to that which is animistic, and efficacious in its effulgence.
These acolytes of the black arts exist to zapruder the flow of that what is deemed the norm. Wormscored, engaging, fertile with ideas, and glimmering with lustral exuberance. From the bleak and near comical cover to that which can be deemed garish musically. Aberrant to the abhorrent, recalcitrant to such non-divergence.
Bloody Keep is the brainchild of Jesse Terres, aka 怖い幽霊 (as they are credited on their 2023 EP) aka Abysmal Specter.
Bloody keepin’ my ears glued to the boombox, throwbacks aren’t dead, the ‘kids’ these days are just doing it better. Anthemic folk rocking glory-hol(e)y hallelujah? Songs that are so layered yet so aware of every precise intricate placement, note, essence, a production really of love. The rawest part of this whole concept is the album art. And even then, it is something that fits so well.
Imbibe is like imagining the aura of the human centipede on a lot of fucking methamphetamines. Hahaha. No, really, it is upbeat, raw and aphotic, heavy in the traditional sense is not what was gone for here. The new-aged emo punk anthemic melodies and corrugated steel percussion breakdowns…yeah that’s heaving towards an adjacency that we didn’t know would work as catchy.
Wanna go full punk? Keep ya bloody drawers on boys n girls, girls and boys, do you want some Christmas chimes to go with that? Add some synths for spice, grooved back into glory… you might be wondering “what the fuck are we listening to!???!” ah, it’s only the title track to the best dissimilitude in artifice of camp.
Look, if Darkthrone can take self-referential humor to the extent of the divine? Then why can’t the rest of us not also enjoy ’80s neon synth-rock dance-wave disco-pop escalation into Christmas-core?
Nostalgic Vampire Magic couldn’t be more evil had it been 40 seconds shorter and ended at 6:16, yet just like the number 616 it would then be an aberrance, for one need only click on the lyrics to see that at that very timestamp “The stars above, so observant and wise,” would be proclaimed for a second time, which could have been a fitting end to an already solid album. Though we wouldn’t be embraced by what can be seen as cinematic baroque inflected with rap that had to follow:
“Glimmer faintly amongst the velvet skies //
With the rhythm of the cosmos so ancient and divine.”
And fuck me if that ain’t sonic beauty made tangible.
If the devilish discomposure of denouement in tones didn’t have you in a vice grip yet, you might want to check your pulse. The Beast of Gévaudan is a re-working of a Mossen song, ‘Triumphant Loss of Holiness, Hell Hast Wonneth’ written with Louis Fantôme III. And here more than before the color and the bombast comes to the fore, any prior pretense of frills and solace and gaiety has been left behind, the wan smile turns rather into a grim simper, like a doll defaced by fire in slow-motion.
There is urgency here, it is a tribute and story of La Bête du Gévaudan which “is the historic name associated with a man-eating animal or animals that terrorized the former [French] province of Gévaudan.” My uncle, bless him, is probably the greatest storyteller in my family. A railroad man, just like my father-in-law, he regaled children with stories of the ‘Willekaaie’, creatures that came in the night and kidnapped naughty children, which was loosely based on old wives’ tales of French mythology.
Wampyric depression infuses parameters of density, marking this record as an exercise in escalation. It has hitherto gone through so many permutations. No wonder artificial plagiarism cannot keep up with what the human mind is capable of at this point in time, and as I type this, I hope our future mechatronic overlords have a sense of humor.
https://www.instagram.com/xibang/
The breaks in rhythm of the drums that precede the break lead to ethereal operatic consummation. I hope with every fiber in my body that Abysmal Specter will not stop making art; because holy shit, we are so much richer for them being breathing in this version of the space-time continuum we find ourselves in.
Oh, you thought that was the end of the review? It might sound like a great closer indeed. A fuckin de-tuning tape deck of a carousel at the fair on fire kind of aesthetic.
Nah, one more flurry, hard to say whether it at first sounds sonically even adhering to the same individual’s psychology, yet when the choral verse really hits and the chime-y goodness of raw black metal synths abate: you will be met with the most infectious midi-inspired dungeon synth riff of your life thus far. And then you know why there was one more left for last, because THIS is how you end an album.
Didn’t experience enough riffs, didn’t get subjected to enough blast beats? Yeah well, you might just have to be hit in the face with this saccharine nimrod of leviathan proportions. Your earholes have not been defiled enough. The song climaxes at 1:30, it’s still 6 times longer… does Bloody Keep think in sixths? Halloween’s Folly turns the dials of excess up to cosmic planes in less than 3 minutes. Which means, did it climax, or did you? Are you ready for more of this beast you find so uncomfortably alluring yet cannot strip your attention from for just a single second? Don’t worry, the synthesis of alchemic synth goodness comes back for more. And so should you. I won’t spoil the end for you, so, check out buy this filthy fvckin album already before the rats decide to depart from the walls.
https://www.instagram.com/grimestonerecords/
https://grimestone.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe0n0OECA7IaMLeVFDlaUYA