AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GLORIOR BELLI — “WELTSCHMERZ WIELD POWER”

(written by Islander)

Cleveland-based Dark Empire Records was originally founded by Dwid Hellion of Integrity in the early 1990s. It released music from such bands such as Confront, Apartment 213, and Integrity, as well as the 1994 compilation Dark Empire Strikes Back, which featured acts like Ringworm, Face Value, Pale Creation, and The Guns.

The label ceased operation in the mid-’90s but has revived, and its newest release will be a self-titled album by the French band Glorior Belli, headed our way in March.

The tale of Glorior Belli has been an interesting one. Their musical evolution began with the debut album Ô Laudate Dominvs in 2005, and then Manifesting the Raging Beast in 2007. By the time of their fifth album, Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls, they had made a name for themselves as purveyors of black metal infused with swampy Southern rock and blues (and their sole recording member Infestvvs had long before that re-named himself “Billy Bayou” in line with that evolution). Since black metal has loaned itself to hybridization probably more than any other extreme metal genre, others would have eventually done this (and probably not as well), but as far as we know, Glorior Belli was one of the first.

With their follow-on sixth album, the very well-received Sundown (The Flock That Welcomes), it seemed that Glorior Belli had decided on something of a return to earlier form. The influence of Southern rock and blues wasn’t completely gone, but it had diminished in favor of more ferocious black metal with a ripping intensity, yet still with unorthodox experiments in the mix.

The Apostates was released in the spring of 2018. Back in his haiku-writing days, Andy Synn summed it up as “Black blessings and sick / Satanic swagger to make / A heaven of hell.” That album moved again, appearing to make more room than its immediate predecessor for Southern sludge and groove (and some other stylistic diversions), especially in the album’s back half.

And now here we are almost seven years later with a new Glorior Belli album in the offing. Based on the band’s history, severely simplified up above, a long-term fan has to be extremely curious about what kind of musical elixirs the undeniably talented Billy Bayou has been imbibing in the interim and what shapeshifting direction(s) the new record will follow.

Self-titling an album this long into a band’s career sometimes signifies a musical re-set or a return to roots, but the decision to name this new one Glorior Belli has another significance, as explained in a statement we have from Billy Bayou:

“The decision to self-title their new album as ‘Glorior Belli‘ is rooted in its representation of their message. The Latin expression ‘Glorior Belli’ signifies ‘basking in pride during times of war,’ a symbol for revealing one’s true potential through facing adversity. This concept aligns tragically with the ongoing war at the gates of Europe, where the fate of millions hangs in the balance. Fearless defenders, some of the most profound free thinkers of our time, will determine the outcome. This is why the album is dedicated to the armed forces of Ukraine and all those who support them. For victory!”

Where has this inspiration led the music? If we’ve learned anything from Glorior Belli‘s past albums, it’s that you really can’t take any one song as a blueprint for the rest of the songs on an album as a whole. But one song is what we have for you today. Its name is “Weltschmerz Wield Power“, it comes fourth in the new album’s running order, and Glorior Belli presents it with a video that Billy Bayou produced and directed.

For those of you (like me) who aren’t native speakers or students of German, Weltschmerz has been defined as “the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances,” or as “a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.”

True to the roots of black metal, the video has no more use for the trappings of The Cross and its carriers than Glorior Belli has ever had, but instead confronts them with levitating horned lords of Hell and their hooded emissaries (among whom are the band members themselves).

As for the music, it’s a rager. It delivers raw and violently rampaging black metal fury, a blast furnace of blistering screams, furiously hammering drums, and corrosive riffing that dismally swarms, blares like the bursts of a warning siren, and writhes in searing madness, accented by quivering lead-guitar ecstasies.

The warmly musing and rapidly murmuring tones of the bass create an intriguing contrast with the scorch-the-earth ferocity of everything else, and the band create another contrast around the song’s mid-point, shifting into a jagged and rapidly jolting riff that alternates with sounds of reptilian slithering, backed by head-smacking beats and a gut-punching bass.

That phase brings feral swagger and head-moving compulsiveness, still fiendish but more carnal in its sensations, but then the vocals scald and the music burns and swarms once more, again with the attention-grabbing bass off on its own frantic frolic.

This new song is electrifying, and clearly leans into Glorior Belli‘s antecedents of diabolical and incendiary black metal rather than one of the many hybrid forms their other creations have exhibited over many years. But how does this song fit into the album as a whole? How representative is it? Where do the rest of the songs take us?

I do have the album as a whole, but haven’t had it for very long, and I’m not going to blurt out any hasty first impressions in an effort to be first out of the reviewers’ starting blocks. But I am sure that eventually either I or one of my NCS comrades will have more to say about it when the time is right.

For more info, check out the locations linked below.

PRE-ORDER:
https://darkempire.bigcartel.com/

GLORIOR BELLI:
https://gloriorbelli.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/gloriorbelliofficial
https://www.facebook.com/gloriorbelliofficial/

DARK EMPIRE:
https://linktr.ee/derecords