“Taur-Im-Duinath (Forest Between Rivers) was founded in 2015 by F., as a means to seek the rhythm, the pattern, the essence that lies within the turning of the seasons, the dance of the leaves in the wind, the growing of roots in the depths, to learn from the transitory yet ever changing nature permeating the Universe. And to transform this Vision into aural landscapes.”
That is the introduction to Taur-Im-Duinath provided by the Dusktone label, which will release this Italian black metal project’s third album Verso Casa (Homewards) on September 13th. It is the follow-up to a first demo named Randir (2016), a debut album on Dusktone named Del Flusso Eterno (2018), and the double-album The Burning Bridges in 2020, which was released by Cult of Parthenope and included both black metal and neofolk material.
On the new album F. has once again composed and performed all the music and the vocals. As a sign of the new accomplishments we’re today premiering a song from Verso Casa named “Madre Notte“.
Before we get to the song, we also want to share a description we’ve been given of the new album’s conceptual themes:
Verso Casa… delves into the meaning of belonging and identity, and the absence of a rooted sense of place. The pondering of questions such as “What is home?” or “What does it mean to feel at home?” becomes the starting point of this perennial journey.
The quest here manifests itself as the search, the longing for a place beyond the physical and immanent meaning, a metaphoric and spiritual locus where peace can finally be found, where all yearnings and strife are meaningless.
And we also have this insight into the specific song we’re premiering today:
Madre Notte (Mother Night) delves into the mystic depths of darkness, the cosmic womb where the primordial forces of creation reside. Inspired by the German poet and philosopher Novalis and his “Hymnen an die Nacht”, where the relationship between life and death are explored,
Night is conceptualised as a gateway to a transcendental realm, beyond the physical world. Keeper of the deepest mysteries, key to the divine and kernel of the spirit of Nature, it is in the embrace of Night that the soul finds solace, the deepest truths are unveiled, and we become one with the Universe.
In translating those profound themes into a song Taur-Im-Duinath has created music that is both ravishing and entrancing, both blazing and bleak. It reaches zeniths of shattering intensity on a dramatic scale and subsides into poignant phases of haunting moodiness.
At the outset the multi-layered guitars scorch the senses as the drums maniacally hammer and the voice explosively screams with frightening intensity. When the drums become more steady, a guitar also feverishly flickers while the bass gloomily throbs at subterranean depth. Glittering notes also slowly trace a melancholy musing backed by momentous jolting fanfares, and other arpeggios sound like the rapid writhing of desperation.
Before the end, the music becomes soft again, and even more ethereal and beguiling, accompanied by whispered words. That forms a prelude to a heart-aching yet glorious solo and a final summit of sweeping, incendiary intensity in which the vocals again sound like a person tearing himself apart from the inside out.
As this one song demonstrates, it is not for naught that Dusktone describes the music on Verso Casa as “a labyrinth of intertwined emotions, painted with evocative and melancholic strokes, not unlike the branches of the trees dancing in the wind, or the seas at storm, or the sullen calm of a mountain peak,” creating “an aura of melancholy, solemnity and fierceness.”
Keep an eye on the locations linked below for more info about the new album and how to get it.
DUSKTONE:
https://www.dusktone.it/
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dusktone/
https://www.facebook.com/dusktone/
TAUR-IM-DUINATH:
https://www.instagram.com/taurimduinath.music/
https://www.facebook.com/taurimduinath
https://taur-im-duinath.bandcamp.com/album/the-burning-bridges