AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FURZE — “COSMIC STIMULATION OF DARK FANTASIES”

(written by Islander)

In April of this year the Trondheim-based “black psych metal” project Furze released a new album named Caw Entrance, its first full-length in six years. (We featured some crazed insights about it in our Comrade Aleks’ interview of Woe J. Reaper last July.)

Surely some significant amount of time would be necessary before he did something else under the banner of Furze, some period of recovery before his head could begin spinning again, and spinning ours — but NO! He quickly began musically self-medicating again, and the result is a second Furze album that’s now set for release tomorrow by Devoted Art Propaganda and Polytriad Fingerprints.

The new one is named Cosmic Stimulation of Dark Fantasies, which is a good description of the music and its apparent intent. You’ll see, because here on the eve of its release we’re presenting all the songs.

The dark fantasies thus cosmically stimulated aren’t all the same, and I’ll attempt to explain what I mean by that, but first here’s how Woe J. Reaper introduces this latest Furze creation:

“We invite you to journey the 9th full length of FURZE – “COSMIC STIMULATION OF DARK FANTASIES”. Creating sounds where eternity is haunting mankind’s will for survival and barking answers seems echoing, twisting that same will to the point of hunting Man’s soul back through spectral infinity.

“The album pushes the personal edge of diverse Furzement to dark delights. Heavily brandished with oldish black doom metal spirit to breed new blood: Under the umbrella Cosmic Stimulation of Dark Fantasies you have songs like Marrow Creed, a psychedelic ballad of an inner self-motion/devotion, Waswasah – a Satanic groove with whispers from a devil so potent we wish only Kings in the beyond would, but do not hear! And another 4 raw power tunes on what is no less than the 2nd (!) brand new Furze full-length in 2024 alone. Long live Black Psych Metal!”

What does this all mean?!? Let’s find out together.

The album includes an Intro track. Though in hindsight one wonders how any stage could be appropriately set for all the dark fantasies to come, this one does so intriguingly. Hard to guess what reverberating plucked instruments is making the track’s glinting and seductively meandering melody, maybe some things medieval in origin… but the music does become darker and more strange before it ends.

And then comes “Beautiful Living on the Left Hand of Death“, a much longer and more unsettling piece. The fuzzed furzed riffing seems a throwback to an earlier era of doomy occult rock, albeit with fiendishly distorted and heavily echoing goblin-rasps and woozy and weirdly wailing guitar leads in the mix.

The drumming is simple and stripped-down, much like the song as a whole, though it also unpredictably rattles and skips while the guitar goes off on its own increasingly strange lysergic-acid tangents, augmented by warbling vintage keys and crazed whistling radiations.

The title song is also a long one, and like its predecessor it creates a sinister aura, but its pacing is more of a gallop (there’s even some vigorous blasting) and the riffing is more delirious at first, though still rooted in old-school psychedelia, and all the instrumental tones have a “garage rock” authenticity — not slicked up or manipulated too much.

The cackling, clawing, and croaking vocals are, of course, still ugly as sin, and the song of course morphs as it goes, eventually moving into a cycling segment of rocking grooves and hooky, punky chords (still corrosively furzed in their tone).

Well now, wait a minute, “Caw Entrance” is the name of the next song. That was also the name of the first Furze album this year – but this song wasn’t in that album. It’s here instead, and it kind of flips the switch.

It includes falsetto singing, bouncing beats, and devilishly spritely melodies, as well as prominently noodling bass notes, yet another different vocal expression (actually more than one, including gutturals), and bursts of whirling riffage. It’s trippy all the way through, but also evolves in ways that make it more unsettling and grim.

Then we move to “Waswasah“, that song that Woe J. Reaper referred to as “a Satanic groove with whispers from a devil so potent we wish only Kings in the beyond would, but do not hear!” Those whispers may remind you of old-school blues vocals out there at the famous crossroads, and at first the song as a whole has a bluesy — but of course psyched-out — feel.

But you’ll also you get the rocking groove and the falsetto vocals again, plus a dose of riffs that sound unearthed from about 50 or 60 years ago, yet don’t sound stale, and occult emanations of weaving and warbling frequencies.

And at last there’s “Marrow Creed“, the one that Reaper called “a psychedelic ballad of an inner self-motion/devotion”. It has no drums. It has no voices. It makes prominent use of acoustic guitar and pedal effects. It sounds even more blues-influenced than anything else on the album. And it definitely… still… is sinister and psychedelic… though more of a spell than what has preceded it, albeit one that may raise the hackles on your neck, especially at the end.

There’s a trippy video out there for this one, and I’ve left it after the links below, but first, here’s all the music:

 

 

Cosmic Stimulation of Dark Fantasies will be available as a Gatefold LP on 15 November, in a collaboration between Devoted Art Propaganda and Polytriad Fingerprints. It’s also available digitally. Check the links below for pre-orders.

PRE-ORDER:
https://order.d-a-p.org/
https://furze.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-stimulation-of-dark-fantasies

FURZE ONLINE:
https://furze.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Furzebook
https://www.instagram.com/furzeofficial/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3fpN43PXA892b3Vklgt28d?si=fCBriejuQw-Fp2PU9goeJA