SHADES OF BLACK: AEONYZHAR, VEIA, FØSPHENE

(written by Islander)

I spent yesterday marching and rallying. It felt good. I spent last night (way deep into the night) consuming a gallon of good whisky with friends who were like a hybrid of rabbits and wolverines, cautious and nimble but also fanged and fierce. This morning I woke up feeling like a crippled turtle.

I thought about not doing anything for this column, just leaving a gap between yesterday and tomorrow. But what might people think? Stroke? Heart attack? Pneumonia? Burst appendix? Going off the road and into a pylon? Is he dead, injured, sick, or what?

Reading what I just wrote, that sure sounds egotistical. More likely, few people would give even a passing thought to why this column never arrived. But more than momentarily, I’d feel like I’d fallen down on the job, in addition to being barely able to stand up this morning. Better something than nothing, so here are three very good somethings.

 

AEONYZHAR (Germany)

Aeonyzhar‘s discography at Metal-Archives is a curious list. It shows a demo in 2008, then an EP in 2013, and now a forthcoming debut album 12 years later. And based on that M-A page, it doesn’t seem the lineup has changed over those last 17+ years. Based on the first song and video for that forthcoming album, it also seems that whatever else they might have been up to during the last big gap, they’ve stored up a lot of ideas and are now getting them out, like water from a firehose.

The well-made video is a lot of fun to watch, partly because of the three string-slingers’ apparel and neat grooming, partly because of the imagery on the screen behind them, partly because of their facial and other physical antics; they certainly seem to be quite comfortable putting on a stage show.

The music is quite a show too. It’s really just on the edge of what this column usually focuses on, but it gave my crippled self the jump-start it needed this morning, so it’s only fair to share.

The song’s opening phase is a feverish, yowling, and hammering experience, and might make you think tech-death even before you hear the roaring death metal vocals. When they come in, weirdly wailing tones slither through the swarming storm, and then the vocals rise up and so does the music, as a symphonic layer sweeps across the song and creates an eerie aura.

Booming drums, wrathful howls, and maniacal screams provide a bridge into yet another phase – a phase of blasting drums, earthquaking bass, otherworldly guitar soloing, and dire symphonics. Then that opening phase returns, but this time augmented with bits of squealing and squirming dissonance. And with some scary gasping vocals leading the way, the band rise up in bombastic extravagance again in the final phase.

Wow, I didn’t really intend to provide such a detailed roadmap for something you can see and hear for yourselves, but having done it I’m not going to erase it.

The song is “I Spit In The Face Of Forgiveness“. The album is The Profane Era. It will be released by Apostasy Records on April 25th. It was mixed and mastered at the renowned Hertz Studio in Białystok, Poland, and is accompanied by the artwork of Michał “Xaay” Loranc.

https://aeonyzhar666.bandcamp.com/album/the-profane-era
https://www.facebook.com/aeonyzhar
https://www.instagram.com/aeonyzhar

 

VEIA (Italy)

The next song is more clearly ensconced in the realms of black metal than today’s first song, but with its own interesting idiosyncrasies.

It’s titled “Il ritorno di Tuchulcha“, and an online translation of its Italian lyrics reveals a hateful appeal to the Etruscan demon Tuchulca, an appeal for lethal vengeance against modern desecrators of tombs and the memory of ancestral cults.

Musically, the song is fast, frenetic, and uncanny. The drums gallop, the bass prominently and mercurially bubbles, the reverberating lead guitar strangely but elegantly ripples and swirls through poisonous sonic mists, and caustic shrieks echo their vitriol from some deep crypt.

The music sounds dismal and distraught, but also furious, and very much like an ancient incantation. The nimble, prog-minded bass performance is an unorthodox element in what might be summed up as raw black metal, and it’s so ecstatic that it makes a startling contrast with the cold cemetery-dwelling creepiness of the sizzling riffage and spectral leads.

The whole song actually sounds unorthodox, like a supernatural bridge across millennia, which is part of what makes it so enticing. It’s one of two songs on a track list at Bandcamp for a demo that bears the names of both songs: Tuchulcha/Il ritorno di Tuchulcha. It has a release date of May 16th, and tapes will be available through Prehistoric Sounds. The songs are described as “two raw excerpts” from a forthcoming debut album named Vacal.

Veia is the vehicle of G.E.F., a member of Thecodontion and Clactonian, among other endeavors. He is the vocalist and lyricist on these songs, joined by bassist G.D. (also from Thecodontion) and people from Svart Vinter and Veil of Conspiracy on drums and guitars. (Thecodontion themselves have a just-released CD compilation of early works, available here.)

G.E.F. explains that the song below “is inspired by “L’Etrusco uccide ancora” (English: “The Etruscan Kills Again”), a cult B-movie from 1972 by director Armando Crispino.”

https://veia.bandcamp.com/album/tuchulcha-il-ritorno-di-tuchulcha-promo-mmxxv
https://prehistoricsounds.bandcamp.com/album/tuchulcha-il-ritorno-di-tuchulcha-promo-mmxxv

 

FØSPHENE (U.S.)

I was drawn to this next song, the final one in today’s short collection, because the band hail from the Pacific Northwest — Corvallis, Oregon, to be precise — and because of the single’s cover art, a painting by Winslow Homer. I was captivated by the music, and had it on repeat for a while on this addled morning.

The riffing is raw and blurry, caustic and dense, a tremolo’d sandstorm-swarm that moves in waves and creates a distressing mood of agony and despair (at least that’s how I hear it). As that beleaguered melody unfolds, the drums hurtle and snap, the vocals assault in jagged screams of harrowing wretchedness. Coincidentally like the Veia song above, this one also includes a nimble and prominent bass performance that contrasts with the scathing nature of the riffing.

Unfolding further, the song’s pacing slows and the music becomes panoramic. Though the rough squall and depressive moods are still there, the lead guitar rings and shines, a wondrous and beckoning kind of splendor. When the music surges again, the guitars seem like a conjunction of bleakness and yearning, of being beaten down but still striving.

The pacing and intensity continue to change, and the music reprises everything before the song ends, just burying the song’s impact deeper in a listener’s head.

“Føsphene” is the eponymous opening song on this band’s self-titled debut album, which will be released on May 2nd. It too features a Winslow Homer painting on the cover.

https://fospheneblackmetal.bandcamp.com/track/f-sphene-2