AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SHAGOR — “HERSIELINGH”

(written by Islander)

In 2020 the Dutch black metal band Shagor made their recording debut with an album named Sotteklugt. I was bowled over by it. As I wrote in my review: “This is one of my true favorites among all the black metal albums I’ve heard this year, and I don’t think my affection for it will fade, even a little, as time passes.”

Roughly five years later Shagor are returning with a second album named Lyksalver, which will be co-released by Vendetta Records and Swarte Yssel on February 8th. They have floored me again, and I think will floor many of you too – though the better metaphor would be more like getting hurled into the Sun.

The inspiration for the album is quite bleak even though the music is often a ravishing spectacle. We’ll share this description, along with a Google translation of the Dutch verses it includes:

This opus is a lament, a cry from the abyss for those who tread the path of despair—the hollowed, the broken, and the lost. It is an album steeped in the sorrow of what once was, a sonic eulogy for a world consumed by decay:

In de nacht, in het donker
in gedachten verzonken
verdrongen de woorden
de klank van het lied

(In the night, in the dark
lost in thought
the words drowned out
the sound of the song)

Krampachtig vastklampend
aan de waan onveranderd
verdronken zij wrokkend
in eigen verdriet

(Clinging desperately
the delusion unchanged
they drowned in resentment
in your own sorrow)

Today, as you see, we’re premiering “Hersielingh“, a breathtaking 10 1/2 minute opus from the album along with video accompaniment that flashes through lots of strange and arresting imagery, much of it drawn from old silent films devoted to the supernatural.

In its opening phase, the music delivers high-flying grandeur above a wide-open percussive throttle. Vast in its sweep and blazing in its tone, the music’s emotional currents are nevertheless distressing, seeming to encompass anxiety and sorrow on a broad scale.

When the reverberating vocals make their bombastic advent — ferocious and scorching and extravagantly crying out — the melody undergoes a subtle change, beginning to writhe in greater agony and hopelessness, but still majestic in its expansiveness.

The screams are berserk; choral chants sound fervent and reverent; the guitars ring like honoring chimes; the music is on fire, rising and falling in towering waves, and the drums thunder like high-caliber weaponry laying down suppressive fire.

Both the key of the music and the range of the choral singing eventually soar to even more elevated heights, as if winging like Icarus toward the sun. When that happens, it’s less distressing and more downright spectacular, so much so that it’s almost frightening.

What’s perhaps most astonishing among many astonishing aspects of the song is that over the course of 10 1/2 minutes Shagor never pull back, never slow their pace, and yet never lose their grip. The broad arc of the song is climbing, ever-upward. It has the elegance, refinement, and layering of a classical symphony; the drama of theater with a large cast; and the ferocity of wild things on the hunt.

“Hersielingh” isn’t the first song revealed from Lyksalver. The first one was “Afschynsel.” It’s also a long piece (about 10 minutes), and it also arrived with a video. If you think Shagor might descend from their musical stratosphere, perish the thought. They still operate up in the range where crags and air shade into the celestial, still intent in taking listeners’ breaths away.

Unlike the song we’ve premiered today, however, “Afschynsel” does at times change in its intensity, silencing the drums or slowing them and allowing the sweep of the music to carry us deeper into phases of grief and despair.

But likewise, it arcs gloriously upward, propelled in part again by strident cries and extravagant choral voices, as well as the electrifying trill of the guitars and the stellar wash of the symphonics. But the arc also leads us to what seems like visions of cataclysm and apocalypse, devastation on a massive scale, and to the intersection of tragedy and splendor.

Further Details:

“Lyksalver was composed between January and June of 2023, with recordings taking place from September to November of the same year at Iguana Studios and Swarte Yssel Home Studios. The mixing and mastering were meticulously completed between January and April 2024 by Christoph Brandes of Iguana Studios. The cover artwork is the creation of Jesse Bollen. The booklet and layout are done by P. & Jesse.”

Vendetta Records will release the CD and vinyl editions, while the tape release will be handled by Swarte Yssel.

PRE-ORDER:
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/album/lyksalver
https://vendettarecords.bigcartel.com/
https://swarteyssel.com/

SHAGOR:
https://linktr.ee/Shagorblackmetal
https://www.instagram.com/shagorblackmetal/
https://www.facebook.com/ShagorBlackMetal