(written by Islander)
I included a fair share of black metal in Part I of yesterday’s large cross-genre roundup despite having this column looming in the near distance. I did that on purpose because the bulk of the verbiage below (and it is bulky) is devoted to an album that doesn’t really fit the usual bill on Sundays, or any other bill, though I have my reasons for including it here.
Yet fear not, ye black metal zealots, because I’m following the opening act with some music that will be more in line with this column’s typical focus, though some of it gets out of line too.
夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER)
In listening to most extreme metal songs, even very good ones, the mind rarely wonders how it was conceived and made, because the answer is so often obvious: somebody cooked up a riff or two; a couple of others added suitable drum-and-bass accompaniment, with some flourishes here and there; a guitarist layered in some melody or spun up a solo; then they brought in a howler monkey or a bear to scratch out some words and expel them, in ways which might or might not fit the bars of the music. (Or maybe one person did all of that.) Et voilà!
But in other instances, sometimes even while listening, you can’t help but wonder how in the world anyone thought of such a thing or was able to put it together, and your bewildered mind has no answer, because the moving parts are so many and the unexpected inter-locking and unlocking of them so paradoxically congruent or curiously incongruous. This is the case of the new EP by 夢遊病者 (sleepwalker), Delirium Pathomutogeno Adductum, which apparently translates to Sentimental Mutagen Delirium.
(I quickly admit it wasn’t quite fair to put this record in a context of extreme metal music generally, in a way which implies it might have recognizable kinship with one or more such genres, because this is such a very distant cousin and one who so resolutely abjures categorization and refuses family reunions.)
Four songs long, each with a name as intriguing as the EP’s, it’s described as “a bridge lingering between worlds, the waking and the dream,” with “the body as the portal and ship traversing between these uncomfortable and ephemeral universes.” The participants include not only the multi-national 夢遊病者 core but also “numerous classical, Americana, gospel and jazz denizens, along with musicians from Spiral Architect, Habbina Habbina, convulsing, P.M.S./Wench, Traveler and Chthe’ilist.”
Depending on the song, the instruments include bouzouki, ukelele, church organ, vibraphone, cello, oboe, french horn, accordion, fretless bass, various percussive implements, and a variety of guitars, including lap steel. Plus there are field recordings and many different voices, including a choir recorded in Nigeria. And that’s not a complete list.
With so many cooks in the kitchen wielding so many tools of their very different trades, it’s all the more remarkable that the music isn’t the audio version of a Jackson Pollock splash-and-spatter job, so abstract that literally everything is left to the consumer’s imagination, or, to return to the first metaphor, something that leaves your innards uncomfortably gurgling (should you really plate a blend of bò kho and jambalaya drizzled with a strawberry emulsion and speckled with minced orchid?). To use an over-used phrase, there is instead a method to the madness, or rather several methods.
I don’t mean to sound condescending to readers when I say that these songs will hold the most appeal to adventurous listeners, but it’s true. It’s also true that when we go adventuring, hoping to be startled, complete mental oblivion isn’t what most people are really after. We might instead mostly want a different way of perceiving the world or ourselves, a startling guidance toward startling insights, but guidance still. Or at least an unusual configuration of disparate sounds and sensations, some quite familiar and others quite alien, that manages to dazzle as well as discombobulate, and seduces us into not just one passing swipe but repeated investigation. This also is the case of Delirium Pathomutogeno Adductum.
The music pulls from many wellsprings, many of them with deep traditions long preceding the advent and evolution of metal, though the concoctions do also include the harsh aggressiveness of metal strains, especially in the vocals. And while the music keeps heads spinning and off-balance, there’s almost equal attention to rhythms that make a primal connection.
One observer I’ll quote below remarked that sleepwalker have “never sounded this alien and this home-y ever”, and I felt the same way. What I have felt most of all is how joyous this music is. It includes a fair share of barbarity, but the joy seems to beat the beasts every time.
What more can I say? I feel like I should say more, because the preceding paragraphs don’t really explain what the methods to this pan-dimensional madness might be, or why the results are both so intriguing and so satisfying. So I’ll add these quick notes, even though I guess they don’t really analyze those questions very intelligibly, while being very forthright that what you take away from the songs and how you settle on them will be very much a function of who you are and the configuration of your own musical tastes, not how I happened to receive them. But isn’t that always true?
“Tongue Arc Orion“: see swirls amidst boulders; darting among roars and quavering cries; calliope tones and ecstatic squeals lifting above funky grooves; getting jazzy while punching; dreamily drifting and eerily caressing, even after the beast-voices come out in a fury… different shades of ecstasy, some jubilant, others post-coital….
“Jupiterian Convulse Tremor“: rumbling and blazing; woozily wavering and putting a pulse in the floor; howling and screaming; riotous battering and bursts of fire; a smoky jazz club infiltrated by glittering sprites; softening and then surging into glorious mayhem, a wild Bacchanal, left gasping… and well, it still sounds jubilant, though it also sounds mean….
“Telepath Transport Wing“: alien transmissions trying to communicate with growling bears and asylum screamers dodging an accelerated avalanche; tones of spell-ish shining, seductive slithering, and warbling pleading; doesn’t sound like those advanced and increasingly perplexed minds are completely getting through to the growlers and screamers, whose hostile fevers and convulsive spasms you can still feel as the avalanche resumes; but the aliens don’t give up, though they seem to recede, contemplating their next move….
“Aurum Iris Loop“: girders clang and sparklers flash; voices wail and voices shatter; a Big Band had hallucinogens dropped into their cocktails; on the deck of the Titanic this time are jazz performers, still devoted to their musing and meandering while icebergs continue slashing below-decks; the rhythm section get their hooks in while the music elevates and swirls; and here comes the passion of the choir and a delirious guitar, leading to the engulfment of a marvelous carnival….
https://vnkv.bandcamp.com/album/delirium-pathomutageno-adductum
Well, you don’t need any more verbiage about the EP — the player’s sitting right there, and most of you probably skipped right past the last 12 paragraphs and started listening 15 minutes ago — but I’m going to add comments about it from three other people anyway, because what they’ve said is so entertaining and insightful. And two of them also know something about how the EP was made.
Rennie Resmini (starkweather):
what do you get offroading a BMW through the Siberian tundra while Fabio Frizzi and Ennio Morricone are riffing with classic power metal, tech overlords Spiral Architect, a lower east side punk/thrash diva, to post punk throttle and angelic choirs? None other than _Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum_ from 夢遊病者 (aka Sleepwalker) Bl’ast! once offered all to take the manic ride, this on the other hand is a trip beyond space, time and logic.
Ron Ben-Tovim (Machine Music):
Sleepwalker are back with another album, and yet it doesn’t feel like just any new Sleepwalker album. It is that because, well, it is, and because it has all the hallmark Sleepwalker atmospheres and weird parallel guitar lines and over disorientation that we have come to expect from our favorite band that’s basically a devouring of every genre of difficult music and then vomiting up gold. But it also isn’t just another Sleepwalker album, for several reasons. I think for me it’s their most magical, most disturbing album, and weirdly also their most immediate. It feels right there when you’re listening to it, which, again, is kind of a Sleepwalker thing, but even more there. But above all it manages to hit a kind of apex of all things – an apex of metal, of experimental music, of world music, of prog, of hard rock even – all while making music that sounds like it never existed. Sleepwalker were always great at making convoluted-seeming music that ended up entering your brain as simple music, that was, to me, if I may speak in the first person, what set them apart from basically everyone. But they’ve never sounded this alien and this home-y ever, almost like a musical demonstration of concepts like unheimlich and defamiliarization. And it rules. It’s catchy. How is that even possible?
Brendan Sloan (convulsing):
what can i say about sleepwalker that I haven’t already said? this is capital M music. vast and kaleidoscopic, completely unrestrained. any ingredient permitted, all methods, no limits and no expectations. once again i’ll refrain from trying to put words to “how it sounds”, because this is music you need to give yourself to in attention and vulnerability. where it takes you will be your own world. irreplaceable and uncopyable.
beyond that: there’s atemporal duelling guitar solos from me and tougas on here, and some snippets of my voice doing big distorted falsettos in close proximity to one of my earliest inspirations. see if you can detect them, as a little game.
CAGED BASTARD (Tunisia)
As compared to this Tunisian band’s multi-faceted August 2024 album, Solace in Virtue’s Absence, their quickly following EP Inhuman Intentions (released last week) is almost entirely raw and raging, a catharsis of fury that was recorded in one take, with no edits. To quote Caged Bastard (aka Muhammad Oun):
The EP digs into the complex darkness of the human nature, exposing the parasitic hunger that drives “people” to exploit others’ pain and suffering. It’s a ruthless exploration of deception, and the false image made up to hide true intentions…. [It] captures the disgusting reality of false empathy, toxic cycles, and the struggle against those who prey on vulnerability.
How does the EP express all these feelings of disgust and rage? It does so in more ways than one, in sounds that are cold and cruel but also slaughtering and even glorying.
The heavily reverbed guitars scrape and scour like steel wool as they rake, roil, and feverishly eviscerate; the vocals gnash with fangs, scream bloody murder, or bray like lions; the drums batter and ram; the bass groans and claws but also becomes a cauldron of molten lead.
At times the music also sounds desperate, with shrill and sizzling siren-like tones whistling overhead and others lost in mad convulsions. At other times, the drums tumble and gallop while the riffage throbs with a slashing pulse.
And that’s not all. In “Incomprehensive Behaviors” an ugly voice snarls its condemnations while eerie ethereal tones ring and roil, and “No One Deserves This Life” is feral and punk-ish and also sets up the throb of blazing blasts to back a spiraling solo. “Agonizing Pain“, on the other hand, sounds just as dismal as what the title portends, and we should be thankful it doesn’t last longer.
https://cagedbastard.bandcamp.com/album/inhumane-intentions
https://www.facebook.com/cagedbastard
VYR MUK (Ukraine)
What’s happening in Ukraine is never far from my mind, though it seems at least half the people here in the U.S. have been convinced not to give a shit. Reminded of the outrages and atrocities almost every day by the news outlets I follow, I tend to give more attention than many to music surfacing from within that besieged country, and that led me to the EP that closes today’s collection.
Here’s how the person behind Vyr Muk (Vlad Blizniuk) introduces this new EP, Тіні, що Падають на Мертві Міста:
This EP is dedicated to the events currently taking place in my country. Each song, apart from the instrumental intro, is dedicated to a different aspect of war and the pain and suffering that surrounds my country every day. I hope I was able to convey the despair and suffering that has not subsided over the years.
That instrumental intro, rendered with acoustic guitar and subdued backing orchestration, is slow, deeply sombre, and quite haunting, as if a summoning of ghosts. But after that the music will knock you back on your heels and whirl your head.
Undergirded by an enormous bass and hard-hitting drums, and voiced by crackling goblin snarls and guttural roars of furious intensity, the songs bring crushing blows and wailing chords, desperately roiling riffage and frantically anguished solos, nimble notes and expansive synths.
The songs also bring constant changes in tempo and intensity, as well as contrasts between bone-smashing brutishness and neoclassical intricacy. The moods of the music are also in continual flux, most of them dark as you might expect, though a portion of “Калейдоскоп Жахіть/Kaleidoscope of Horror” sounds like a wild and whirling dance before it falls prey to frenzies of despair and dismal agonies.
“Kaleidoscopic” turns out to be a good descriptor for the EP as a whole, straight to and through the thoroughly head-spinning “Мертвий Ліс/Dead Forest“, an ice-storm of second-wave black metal that starts twisting and turning in unexpectedly mercurial and diabolical, but electrifying, ways, pulling from musical influences beyond black metal, as all the songs do.
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/vyrmuk/shadows-falling-on-the-dead-cities
https://vyrmuk.bandcamp.com/album/-