(written by Islander)
As predicted in the intro to yesterday’s roundup, the high winds in our area finally did murder the power at our house. Amazingly, it didn’t happen until overnight, and more amazingly, the internet is still working this morning even though the power’s dead, so here we are.
But I’m getting a late start today for a different reason: I went to a holiday party in Seattle for my job last night. It was fun, and somehow three Sazerac cocktails didn’t leave me crawling, but by the time our royally fucked-up ferry system got me home the wee hours of Sunday were already in progress. So I’ve shortened my plans about what to do in this column; otherwise it will arrive very late in the day.
YOVEL (Greece)
You’re thinking, this dude just said he was shortening his plans and here he is starting off with an entire album. A valid point, but the shortening in this case refers to how many words I’ll be spilling.
I should be spilling a lot more about Yovel‘s The Great Silence, which was released two days ago. As usual for this band, the album is a channel for perspectives about the world that I wish more people shared. They are worth thinking about. Here’s an excerpt from how Yovel introduced the album:
The “Great Silence” spreads its nets over our lives and we – its victims and dependent consumers – blissfully abandon ourselves to its sweet embrace.
Locked in our cells, locked in ourselves, we derive satisfaction from what is now considered “life”, the endless time in front of one, or more, screens.
Indifferent to what is happening around us. Indifferent to what is happening inside us. Indifferent to the war and the destruction, the death and uprooting of thousands of people….But we forget that we ourselves are prisoners. Inside tones of concrete, in gray colors. Gray people, tuned zombies full of guilt and doubt, capable of living only through and within successive notifications – in thousands of momentary stimuli. Until the next one.
…With apathy we now look at those who audaciously “threaten” our “peace”. Apathetic we stand and simply watch, hunted people, women with children in their arms, drowning by the thousands, every year. We are now witnesses of genocide in our neighborhood. We saw it again today on our “social” networks. The rubble and the famine, before the kitten post and after the selfie – product placement.
We know what’s happening. We know why it’s happening. But these disasters are for “others,” we think. Not us. Just as massive and escalating poverty, once was reserved for “others”…
We don’t even have the ability to realize, that, the powerful are not only studying how we spend our time on their devices, but mainly what we tolerate while we do it.
…[W]e will fight to get out of this deafening “Great Silence”. We will fight and perhaps we never win. But “Better Days Will Come”. By any means necessary.
Yovel have also said that now, four years after their “Optimism of the Will” album (i.e., Forthcoming Humanity), they find themselves different: “Older. Worn out & worn thin. Substituting anger with grief; joy with irony. Leading darker lives in humanless lands we call home. With both feet, sinking deeper and deeper into the ‘Pessimism of the Intellect'”. But they say they also know now “what freedom means: We feel it in our bones.”
The song titles for the album’s five long songs connect to the messages quoted above. The music, however, isn’t worn out and thin, even if its creators find themselves in that condition. They’ve harnessed their frustration, disgust, and anger and loosened the reins.
The music charges and roars, it rails and wails, and it boils and blazes. It becomes dismal and distraught, it whips up furious frenzies, and occasionally it even sounds gloriously joyous. One minute it might sound like a somber acoustic folk-song, the next a firestorm, and the next a prog-metal extravaganza. It will get heads pumping as well as spinning, and leave nerves jangled as well as jumping.
The songs are quite varied in just about all ways: in their tempos and rhythmic patterns, in their volume and their intensity, in their vocals and instrumental ingredients, in their contrasts between gritty harshness and piercing clarity and between melodiousness and discordance, in their degrees of intricacy.
Often, the variations occur suddenly, throwing the listener off-balance. The point, after all, is to be disruptive, to jar people out of their complacency and to shatter comfort zones. Yovel want people to wake up, and their new album is definitely an eye-opener and a jaw-dropper, so stunning that if year-end listmakers with an ear for unconventional black metal hear it, they’ll have to now make adjustments. Hands-down, it’s certainly one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.
And of course, Yovel‘s messages come through loud and clear in the lyrics and vocal samples. It’s probably too much to hope that one album will cause many people to wake up who aren’t already awake. But it’s very clear that Yovel aren’t about to give up. More power to them.
https://yovel.bandcamp.com/album/new-album-the-great-silence-2024
https://www.facebook.com/yovelband/
https://www.instagram.com/yovelband/
EEUWIG (Netherlands)
How to follow up that Yovel album? A very tough question, but honestly I didn’t think long about it because daylight’s burning. I just stabbed a few songs off my curiosity list and they all turned out good, so here’s the first of those.
This first one, from the Dutch trio EEUWIG, surfaced about a year ago. It turned out to be just what I would have tried to find as a follow-on to Yovel‘s album. It fits very well because it too is quite multi-faceted in its tonal ingredients and moods.
In “Tides” EEUWIG deliver a hybrid of black metal and classic doom, with other ingredients and accents that aren’t standard for either of those genres. They discharge dismal and disconcerting riffage, dense and harsh in tone, but also flowing melodies of sorrow. They deliver blasting tirades but also hard-punching jolts and rocking beats. They voice the words in gloom-steeped singing and in ferocious howls and tormented screams.
They heave and stomp like a dying leviathan but spin a shrill and exhilarating solo around the head of that heavy beast. The guitars also ring like haunting bells and seem to yearn like massed mourners. They end it with a swirl of wildly darting tones that haven’t appeared before but don’t seem out of place.
As mentioned, “Tides” was released last year, but much more recently (yesterday!) EEUWIG released another song named “The Hourglass,” along with a video. This one includes additional vocals by the female singer Mist.
Ethereal and haunting at first, “The Hourglass” swells into a ferocious surge of hammering drums, tidal riffage that grimly abrades the senses, and unhinged snarls. The song also viciously jolts, just in time for Mist‘s relatively subdued singing to join in with those crazed screams.
It seems the music might never relent in its distraught and even despairing intensity, but instead it suddenly shifts into tribal percussive beats and warbling/skittering electronics, creating a prelude for Ronald Stempyn‘s singing to take the lead, and then for the music to elevate and cascade, elevated even further by a rock-god guitar solo. For a time, the music sounds intensely yearning, but falls into despair again.
https://eeuwig.bandcamp.com/track/tides
https://eeuwig.bandcamp.com/track/the-hourglass
https://linktr.ee/eeuwig
https://www.facebook.com/EeuwigNL
BOLG (Bulgaria)
The name of the penultimate song in today’s collection is “Драчие” (Drachie). This is is how Bolg (whose name means “wolf”) introduce it:
Drachie is a real wooded area, imbued with a dark and eerie atmosphere. We visit it occasionally, and its chilling ambiance inspired the creation of this song. Locals from the neighboring village are deeply concerned about the creatures that descend from the mountains, further adding to the area’s frightening aura. In the shadowy forests, where “glowing eyes” seem to watch from the darkness, the fears of the villagers come alive, and the cold wind whispers sinister tales.
The song itself definitely creates a sinister and chilling atmosphere, a dismal and depressive mood created by wolf-like howls, a slow flow of grim and gritty riffage, and primitive pounding and snapping drums. The vocals are themselves frightening, a shrill and screeching snarl that seems to reverberate off midnight trees.
The lead guitar slowly flickers like some red-eyed wraith gleaming in the mist, and from there the music begins to intensify, as the drums snap with greater animation and the riffing begins to sizzle and swarm. But that intensity soon recedes, allowing the bass to murmur and the guitars to slowly wail and writhe.
Finally, the song races, drums clattering in a gallop and the riffing flaring into wild spirals and fearful swirls; it seems those creatures are now giving chase, with villagers fleeing in terror.
The music is accompanied by a video that panoramically shows us the landscapes of the area that lends the song its name.
“Драчие” is a song from Bolg‘s upcoming 10-song album Where Death Dwells. A couple of months ago they released the title track from that album, and I’ve included it below as well.
The title song races and roils from the first seconds, creating an experience of dangerous delirium, electric in its impact, with just a few breaks that again generate the kind of grim and bone-chilling atmosphere that flourished within “Драчие“.
Bolg have said this about their forthcoming album, which is projected for release sometime in January:
Recorded in 2024 at the eerie Basement Crematorium Studio, and mixed/mastered at Opus Magnum Studio in Brussels by the enigmatic Déhà, this album takes its name from a haunting Black Sea legend.
According to folklore, the depths of the Black Sea are so dense that no light can penetrate, leaving it devoid of life—a place where Death itself resides, shrouded in eternal darkness.
https://bolg.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/bolg.band