Category: Current listening

May 19, 2013

Unfolk + Live Book: psychedelic journey and call for justice in folk music adventures

Alessandro Monti, Unfolk + Live Book, Diplodisc, 2 x CD DIPL 005/6 (2012)

News reached me the other day of a young software engineer Amanda Ghassaei who etched a Radiohead album with a laser cutter on a wooden disc. She’s also etched other audio recordings onto acrylic and paper. Phooey, you all say, a wooden music-playing record has been made before. WHAT?! I had to find out and sure enough one Heracleum Ipotesis had done it way back when in the High Middle Ages to preserve his “unfolk” music compositions – or so says one Alessandro Monti who with his Unfolk Collective music combo have had their “Unfolk” album from 2006 remastered and reissued with a bonus CD of reworked songs from a previous album “The Venetian Book of the Dead”.

Most tracks on the remastered “Unfolk” disc might have Italian-language titles but the music draws influences from Irish folk music traditions, Indian ragas, Arab and Venetian mediaeval Venetian lute music among other music genres. The journey through the disc is an interesting one: it’s as much a tour through Western contemporary popular music turns on “folk” and tracks like “Aerofolk” feature mind-expanding space cosmic music played on electric guitar, synthesiser and other electronic keyboards, giving a soundtrack that wouldn’t be out of place in the corpus of works by the likes of Can or Amon Düül 2. Speaking of “Aerofolk”, I think that’s becoming my favourite track here the more I listen to it for its sense of wide-eyed wonder and joy in exploring inner and outer space. Generally the happier the music on the album sounds, the better it is; the music that’s melancholy, brooding or contemplative tends to come across as a bit ordinary. One curious coincidence I note is that the violin melody on track 11 matches, note for note, the violin tune on Swedish 1970s space / folk rock group Älgarnas Trädgård’s song “Children of Possibilities” from that band’s first album; I think it’s likely both bands have used the same mediaeval tune.

Disc 2 “Live Book” sees a different set of musicians around Monti playing live in Mestre near Venice and in Leicester in 2011. About half the tracks from “The Venetian Book of the Dead”, referring to the workers and people who lost their lives to cancer and other diseases as a result of industrial accidents in areas around Venice and Mestre during the 1970s and 1980s, appear here. Subordinate to the lyrics, the music adopts moods appropriate to their message: dark, smoky and urgent (“Someone is always screwing someone”) and blunt, blaring and impassioned (“Forgive”). The best track here though is an excursion into a nostalgia for various 20th century music genres that had their roots in Afro-American oppression, poverty and despair: “Bedroom discotheque” gets its soulful, wistful emotion from the beautiful acoustic guitar and electric cello melodies and changes in key that bring on an extra layer of dark desperation to vocalist Kevin Hewick’s singing. Through repetition of the lyrics, Hewick tries to push back an enormous and relentless advance of ice that threatens to wipe out an entire structure of music historical and cultural memory. His lyrical venture into hiphop seems awkward and ill-advised though, as if he can’t quite figure out how this music, born in poverty and violence-ridden ghettoes, and others like it came to be unashamed whores for the global music industry. The music is a mix of unfolk, blues and rock with a slight dominance by electric guitars and other electrified musical instruments.

Some very good music is featured on both discs but there are also passages of quite stodgy instrumental music, especially on the latter half of Disc 2 where the music takes a more pessimistic and embittered turn with tracks like “The radioactive man”. Monti’s quest for social justice in his music hasn’t quite reached the stage where he might start tackling the true sources of oppression in our society, going after banks in their usurpation of control of global economies and their links with corporations across the world including the arms industry, and the media, both “conservative” and “progressive”, alike for pulling huge chunks of wool over our eyes; and then generally calling for people to take back their power and do whatever they can under their control, no matter how small or petty, to create or recreate a fair world. I’m hoping he’s moving in that direction.

In an age in which most music produced these days is under the thumb of global media corporations and even the music of traditional societies from the past or in the current present is shaped and packaged by the music industry as an endless array of exotica, divorced from its original contexts, for consumption by tourists, Monti’s concept of unfolk music may be intended as a challenge to such concepts.

May 16, 2013

Maniacal Meditations: extreme death metal invades microtonal realms

Last Sacrament, Maniacal Meditations, Microtonal Records, cassette MR003 (2011)

In my immediate previous review (Jute Gyte’s “Discontinuities”), I mentioned that JG man Adam Kalmbach used a guitar that had been retro-fitted to accommodate a 24-tone scale by Ron Sword who happens to be guitarist for a Florida death metal Last Sacrament. This band uses a 16-tone scale to play its particular brand of extreme precise death metal. At this time of writing, Last Sacrament had only this demo release to their name; a full-length album “Enantiodromia” is in the works with a release any day now.

On first hearing, the 4-song set appears no different from most maniac death metal – probably because my ears have heard a fair amount of microtonal music in the past so the quirky aspect is lost on me and much of what I hear is deep slurping swamp-monster vocals, militaristic blastbeats and grinding bass against a steely cavernous background. On second hearing though, the difference becomes apparent: it’s in the band’s sound which is deep and oily, and in the dream-deranged chaos of the lead guitar breaks.

“Emergence of Opposites” can be a fairly flowing track with near-flighty percussion breaks and squalling lead guitar that literally takes listeners into another sonic dimension. “Self-Deceit” is slower and for its first half unremarkable DM; it’s only when we reach the lead guitar instrumental that once again we’re whacked clean round the bend with other-worldly flighty guitar melodies. Oftentimes these sound more like analog synthesisers or special effects cooked up in the past by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for old Doctor Who TV programs.

“Tyrants of Pain” features extended passages of flowing yet demented screaming guitar trills and tones that wash and flush out the brain cells like nothing I’ve ever heard before and will probably never hear again. “Post Human” sees the band lifting its game for one last shot of lavaging those quivering synapses: crunchy bass rhythms and insane nuclear-powered percussion go all-out to support the lead guitar which now flies around the shop like a posssessed demon pursued by other possessed demons whenever chance permits.

I suppose this being the band’s first release, “Maniacal Meditations” needs to err on the conservative side and let everyone know that this is a death metal recording first and foremost and experimental music second. For the most part the innovative aspects are kept strictly on the leash and are let out now and again but only for short periods. The lead guitar does its whirling-dervish dance at some distance far in the mix on most songs: I do not know if this was intentional or just a quirk the musicians hadn’t anticipated. The level of musicianship is consistent, precise and very much what should be expected of technical death metal. Likewise, the lyrics aren’t out of the ordinary for death metal, dwelling on humanity’s failure to safeguard its freedoms and prevent its fall into enslavement followed by society collapse and planetary apocalypse.

Even so, a track like “Tyrants of Pain” demonstrates in a couple of short instrumental passages the potential for extreme microtonal death metal to race off in the exotic outer-realms of hell, space or other virtual dimensions. I’d like to see these guys adopt a far more improvisational and experimental approach in their music so that they can bring out the full potential of microtonal music in an extreme metal setting.

Contact: Last Sacrament

May 14, 2013

Discontinuities: a new way of seeing the world in hidden musical tones

Jute Gyte, Discontinuities, Jeshimoth Entertainment, CD JE063 (2013)

Jute Gyte is a very prolific act that has so far released 20 albums and a couple of EPs since 2007. For this album, JG man Adam Kalmbach had his guitar retro-fitted by Ron Sword of Sword Guitars (and Florida death metal band Last Sacrament) to accommodate a scale of 24 tones that enables our man to explore and play microtonal intervals. At last Kalmbach can break with his previous style of guitaring extreme industrial black metal soundscapes and dive into something even more extreme, hence a reason for the album’s title “Discontinuities”; other reasons will become apparent in this review.

Listeners will pick up the new sound straight away: on first hearing the album does sound highly discordant and cacophonous. It’s an organic sound though, one that comes across putting its feet right and not making awkward turns just for the sake of it. Other instruments on the album (bass, synth, programmed percussion) quickly fall in line with the new sound and my ears at least become accustomed just as fast. The music turns out to be as fluid and natural as Kalmbach’s own song-writing abilities allow.

The album describes a dense and hellish sonic universe in which familiar points of reference either no longer exist or are demonstrated to be bizarre and meaningless. The realisation that our paradigms of viewing the world and the universe are and have always been irrational falls heavily on us. Whether loud, defiant and brazenly noisy or subdued, Kalmbach presents us with the truth of our existence, hitherto inaccessible because of the limitations of previous musical tools we had, and that truth is not at all pretty. Lyrics of tracks like “Night is the Collaborator of Torturers” and “Romanticism is Ultimately Fatal” force us to acknowledge the ugly consequences of our delusions and self-cocooning with cultural myths, propaganda and groupthink. After the instrumental title track, later songs focus on decline and death in a world collapsing under the ruin we have inflicted on it.

Apart from the title track which is a minimalist guitar groan-drone affair, the songs tend to sound much alike: the basic structure for each track consists of several repeating riff loops. On all tracks the barking vocal is thin, harsh and ragged. The programmed drumming takes a distant second or third place to the other instruments and sticks to keeping time and setting the pace: this prevents the music from becoming bombastic

The whole work is bleak and relentless. Probably parts of it could have been edited for length as the guitar sound is so dense and demented that the music actually does not need to rely on repetition and length to accentuate tension. The sound can be a bit flat as well when there is excessive looping of riffs. Only on the last track “Acedia” does the music start to mix volume and mood dynamics: blaring metal guitar noise insanity is punctuated with short quiet and contemplative moments.

This might be one album that doesn’t get much play but when you do spin it, it’s highly immersive and confronting, and it’ll fair clean your head of the petty issues, fears, lies and obsessions that trouble everyone else and keep us all enslaved to The Man.

Contact: Jeshimoth Entertainment

May 12, 2013

Kentucky: an impassioned and fiery black metal / bluegrass clarion call for justice and the preservation of history

Panopticon, Kentucky, Pagan Flames, CD (2012)

My loyal, faithful fans – they probably number no more than a few misguided and socially maladjusted souls in desperate need of a more fulfilling life – who’ve been following my blatherings on TSP for many years will know that sometimes I get quite political and go off on rants totally unrelated to the music under review. Here at last is a recording over which I can now wax lyrical over politics and social justice; into the bargain also is the fact that it’s a black metal album! Yessiree, that most “apolitical” and socially apathetic of music genres has yielded an inspired and impassioned recording that comes down squarely on the side of one of the most marginalised, impoverished, embattled and least celebrated groups in modern America: the people, in particular the coal-miners, of the Appalachian mountain region in the eastern US. USBM one-man band Panopticon’s “Kentucky” revolves around the history of the struggles of the coal-miners of eastern Kentucky against their employers, the state and federal governments, and established religion for the right to form trade unions, improve their wages and working and living conditions, and give their families and communities a decent life.

The music is a splendid mix of aggressive and pile-driving black metal, stirring bluegrass music performed on banjo and violin, melodic post-rock and spoken voice and found sound recordings. Together with its subject matter, “Kentucky” comes close to being something a more fired-up Godspeed You Black Emperor could have produced if that band had incorporated some black metal aspects. Particular highlights of the album include Panopticon leader A. Lunn’s adaptation of “Come All Ye Coal Miners” which finishes with brief coal-mine work ambience and a brief speech on the history of the exploitation of mine workers and the land alike; “Black Soot and Red Blood” which details the battles the miners fought against a formidable multi-headed enemy; and the instrumental outro track “Kentucky”, a beautiful homage on banjo, resonator and mandolin to the mountains and forests of Kentucky state and the ghosts of people who died defending their lands and communities.

Songs on the album are arranged in a historical time-line form the early history of native Americans to the present and the music proceeds from the personal – two locations in rural Kentucky dear to A Lunn’s heart – to the historical and general.

Admittedly this is not a perfect work – some of the black metal can be repetitive and bombastic and the vocal on “Black Waters” is so distant and blurry that the lyrics can hardly be heard – but the sentiment behind the music is a deeply felt one and powers it all the way through the album. “Kentucky” is a clarion call to all decent-minded people to remember the history of the coal miners in Appalachia and their fight for a decent life, and to support present efforts of community and environmental groups to preserve the lands and natural resources of southeastern Kentucky.

Some of the profits from sales of this album are being donated to fight the use of mountain-top removal as a mining method in Kentucky. Mountain-top removal is a particularly hideous and devastating form of large-scale mining: it involves using dynamite or other explosives to blast away forest, top soil and hundreds of vertical metres of rock to expose coal seams. The debris is dumped into nearby valleys and river-beds, causing silt-up and disrupting the natural flow of streams and rivers. The consequences of this form of mining, while it dispenses with the expense and hazards involved in sending miners underground, can be imagined: air pollution including toxic aerial chemicals, increased soil erosion in affected areas, increased risks of flash-flooding and mudslides threatening homes and communities, pollution of groundwater to name a few.

In addition, the areas affected by mountain-top removal in both Kentucky and neighbouring parts of West Virginia state have historic, cultural and archaeological significance as several of them were the scenes of bitter fighting in the Battle of Blair Mountain, fought by 10,000 coal-miners and supporters against mining companies, local law enforcement and eventually the US Army, in West Virginia in 1921. Several thousand coal-miners who took part in this battle, the largest armed civil uprising in US history after the American Civil War, came over from Kentucky; the miners also received support from local communities, in particular from returned WW1 veterans and medical people who treated wounded miners. The uprising was crushed severely and miners were forced back into the mines on pay and working conditions made worse than before. However the battle also raised public awareness of and sympathy for the appalling working conditions that coal-miners had to face, and eventually in the 1930s the miners benefited from political, social and economic changes brought about by President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.

However as the fight to preserve Blair Mountain from mining demonstrates, the battle for worker rights and to preserve the memory of this battle continues.

Contact: Pagan Flames

May 7, 2013

Cypher: black metal fusion soundtrack tracking our path to Hell

Spektr, Cypher, Agonia Records, ARCD102 (2013)

It’s been several years since I heard anything by this duo and one reason is that Haemoth & Co haven’t been very prolific: “Cypher” is their first release since “Mescalyne” in 2007. The major advance in Spektr’s music since then is the musicians’ incorporation of elements from several other music genres such as industrial, melodic post-metal, jazz and the usual musique concrete and spoken voice samples with the result that this album resembles a soundtrack to an otherwise silent horror sci-fi film. There is also much manipulation of atmosphere and emotion here.

What horrific futurist film might Spektr be offering on “Cypher”? It agrees more or less with previous work of theirs in which an intrepid adventurer, investigating the deepest recesses of the human mind, crosses into a realm beyond life where not even the dead normally go but some of heightened mental and emotional sensitivities, and some training in gnostic knowledge and ritual, might dare to enter. The volume of the music goes up and down as if the whole thing were animated by an inwardly-generated self-aware consciousness. The critical Rubicon appears to take place somewhere in track 3 (“The Singularity”).

Pivotal tracks are “Teratology”, “The Singularity”, “Antimatter”, the surprisingly blues-sounding (at least in its first few minutes) “Cypher” and “Le Vitriol du Philosophe”, this last being the most brutally industrial, ambient and futuristic, and the least black metal. Indeed, black metal figures much, much less than might be expected: the guitars are still sharp but have a more melodic bent. The long tracks rampage across the musical spectrum and dive into quite unexpected turns and twists; the short tracks are usually quiet ambient interludes between long tracks.

Only about 45 minutes, the album feels like a mammoth effort on the duo’s part to create a hellish odyssey into demonic kingdoms, out of which our explorer ends up crawling out of a wormhole into a future society run by self-aware machines powered by simulacra of human brains. There is not a flesh-n-blood critter in sight. One shudders to think that the one thing more terrifying than what Satan and his acolytes can magick up is the mind, individual and collective, that can imagine Satan and the demonic hierarchy in the first place. As I sit and type this review, am I already looking into the shape of Hell?

Contact: Agonia Records

May 7, 2013

Kuxan Suum (self-titled): spacey psychedelia and black / death metal fusion inspired by Mayan mythology

Kuxan Suum, self-titled, Fallen Empire Records, LP FE-2012-02 (2012)

Belonging to the Black Twilight Circle of southern Californian black metal bands, several of which have Hispanic American origins, Kuxan Suum take a keen interest in exploring Mayan mythology and culture. This self-titled release is a compilation of a demo “Kinich Ahau” and another track that may or may not have been released previously on the (now-defunct) Crepusculo Negro label.

“Kinich Ahau” begins with a beautiful trilling guitar melody that becomes bleached in its tone and the echoes that build up and reverberate through your skull. Soon enough the guitar melody gains a bleached-out acid psychedelic reverb edge that makes you see weird day-glo lime-green / hot purple / sky-blue cartoon colours in your mind. The echoes climb higher in scale until your ears almost bleed from the shrill, near-screechy edge.

The rhythm section joins in the fun and quickly a phantom vocal starts to screech and howl in the background while guitars and drums go hell for leather to their inevitable fate when they must surely disappear high in the cosmos and become part of its eternal fabric. About the halfway mark the track reaches a plateau and the pace slows down so the music coasts along while the weird bubbling and gurgling noises whirl wildly about in your brain and the vocalist groans and sighs as if suspended in an ethereal fluid bearing him to another plane of torture. Guitar shimmer and reverberation continue with the tone milked for all it’s worth.

The track continues on and on, escalating in derangement and intensity … I think you can tell where it will end, it ain’t gonna be peaceful … the heart-rending screams go on and on … sure enough, everything is rent apart and the very atoms and sub-atomic particles are cut asunder and dissipated throughout space until all is null and the universe carries on as if nothing ever happened.

The second track “Principle of Harmonic Resonance” is a deeper, meatier piece, more death metal in its orientation, and with clearer and more definite vocals that are fairly up-front in the music. The guitars have sparkling jewel-like tones that enrich the song together with the faint ethereal background synthesiser. Although the song doesn’t soar as screechingly high as “Kinich Ahau” and is a darker piece, it has its own far-reaching charm especially just after the halfway mark when, for a couple of minutes, it threatens to take your brain apart cell by cell by its mesmeric tones. Changes of key take the track into some dangerously interesting and interestingly dangerous by-ways that seriously mess with the brain. This is a place where you might want to stay forever: lead guitar is bewitching in its melodies, the rhythms are crisp and no-nonsense chunky, the synthesiser is keening away in sympathy with the vocalist whose raspy voice swings from pity and sorrow to derangement and despair at the madness creeping over him.

Both songs deserve a wider audience for their fusion of spaced-out ambient psychedelia and black / death metal taken to the genres’ extremes. Listeners are led, willingly or unwillingly, on a major voyage through multiple levels of existence to an absolute revelation, beyond which there may only be annihilation. There must be a link with Aztec or Mayan mythology here: perhaps the songs take as their inspiration the journey that souls of people who have died of natural causes make after death through several layers of hell to reach Mictlan, the Land of the Dead, where they dwell in nothingness forever.

Contact: Fallen Empire Records

May 5, 2013

Cloaks versus Grain: blank snapshot of future society in industrial techno dubstep album

Cloaks, Versus Grain, 3by3, 3by3002CD (2009)

It has a certain cache for one track “R.F.I.D.” which contains samples from a flick “Zeitgeist” which several people have recommended that I see but about which I have reservations that it is emotionally manipulative, simplistic and confrontational in its approach. Apart from that tidbit, this album by Cloaks is a punchy industrial techno affair sure to appeal to us tinfoil-hatted fashionistas. Plenty of futuristic cyberpunk sci-fi paranoid nightmares of all-seeing / never-sleeping panopticon cities stretching many a mile from one side of the country to the other may be imagined here. Cyber-insekt drones survey the population either singly or in swarms, quickly scanning the state of people’s minds, analysising the neurochemical states of individuals’ brains and diving down quickly to jab in injection of tranquilising serotonin into the bloodstream, mosquito-like, whenever someone is detected as having unhappy thoughts. People willingly submit to body searches and biochemistry assays via in-built doorway surveillance systems every time they enter or exit a building or public space: thieves are immediately tagged with an electromagnetic disc they cannot see and everywhere they flee they are tracked and pursued by tracker micro-drones that can fire paralysing pellets with unerring accuracy into a designated spot on the body. Citizens are permanently plugged into the city’s central database and anyone who ducks out of the system for even a few minutes is regarded as suspicious and possibly criminal. Such will be life in the Megatechnopolis. If you have a headache from all this, take your choice of chill pills: the red one or the blue one.

Or you could listen to this nine-track patchwork snapshot of what your lives will be like in a decade or so: heavily reliant on looping textures, rhythms and effects, the music is essentially static all the way through and offers no point of vulnerability in its steely carapace. Particularly impressive is “sixmenacetwo”, a lumbering behemoth of hard-hitting, hard-edged beats and digital effects with a dubstep rhythm. The aforementioned ”R.F.I.D.” is another awkward clunky beast. Final track “Detritus” reveals an unexpectedly danceworthy rhythm beneath humming drones of analog noise scree. Even in the midst of a tightly controlled techno-society there may be allowed pockets of individual rebellion that masquerade as obedience, though it’s just as likely that the powers in control recognise that people need outlets to let off steam and provide and moderate channels of harmless rebellion.

The album seems fine as it is though overall it seems a bit blank and one-dimensional in a way and several tracks hold potential for a more thorough and thought-out work-out of layered noise and rhythms.

Contact: 3by3, Baked Goods

April 30, 2013

Vaporware / Scanops: quiet electronic wonderworld shyly waits for visitors

Bee Mask, Vaporware / Scanops, Australia, Room 40, RM450 (2012)

Deceptively innocent and cheerful, this spacey and spaced-out recording by Bee Mask (Chris Madak) reveals some unexpected dark moods and a slightly forlorn air that suggests longing and loneliness in parts.

“Vaporware” relies heavily on a hard electronic space-ambient groove to whip up the rest of the music into readiness for launch into the vast reaches of space. Three-two-one and it’s off we go into heady vistas of interstellar wonder riding on flotsam and jetsam of busy rubber sonic stitchery, curvy bubbles, popping drone and fairy celeste tone melodies. A beautiful journey in sound and mood this is, rich in bejewelled bedazzlement and a mix of joy, awe and not a little sadness that this all has a finite life.

Sad wistfulness continues to be a driving force in “Scanops” but the sighing sounds give way to sampled voice and effects that have a playful, sunny quality. The music tails off into bubbling water, twittering swirls and repeating voices. More bewitching and befuddling sounds follow that draw the rapt listener into an active and ever-changing sound universe. Our journey eventually drifts into a soft and quietly happy world that is known to very few others.

At times Madak falls too deeply in love with these sounds and hangs onto them for all they’re worth, to the point where the music almost starts to sound laboured and self-indulgent. I almost want to turn away to something more focussed and less pretty. Apart from this little gripe, I find this extended single / short album is a welcome and pleasant work to play late in the evening. You may be at home late at night on your own after yet another hard day and want something to remind you that there are still wonders in the universe shyly waiting for you to reach out to them: well, this recording is your guide to these quiet beings.

Contact: Room40

April 23, 2013

Cold of Ages: a grand and epic black metal / doom fusion recording

Ash Borer, Cold of Ages, Profound Lore Records, CD (2012)

Ash Borer’s second album could very well be their breakthrough release: it’s at once highly atmospheric, cold, dark, incredibly focused and energetic. After a brief lilting introduction, the music springs full-bore into all-out aggression and depressive darkness. If Ash Borer were strongly associated with the Cascadian black metal scene in the past, they’re moving away from it with a strong and distinct style that plumbs deeply into darkness and nihilism. There is still a nature ambience near the album’s beginning but increasingly it’s being replaced by melody and riff, speed and a song-writing and playing approach that emphasises a huge range in sound dynamics.

Opening track “Descended Lamentations” is a heady combination of melancholy doom grandeur, black metal chaotic fury and ominous Gothic ambience. Trilling lead guitar lines are mixed up with sharp buzzy riffing and the vocals are equally varied, ranging from reverb-cloaked monster growls to phantom cries and howling. The heights and depths of this fusion of black metal / doom / psychedelia are mined for their riches in melody, tone, mood and atmosphere to produce an epic music mammoth – and still there are more treasures that Ash Borer offer up.

“Phantoms” initially runs on a slower track but picks up energy and speed very quickly. Before you know it, it’s careening madly about the joint as if trying to find an escape and discovering none. The tones are less bright and the mood is urgent. On and on the piece goes, raging against everything hurled against it by an uncaring universe. Defeat is at hand however and the mood becomes more sullen and despondent.

“Convict All Flesh” might well be the best track here – it’s truly an example of how to write and play an operatic work of black metal doom existential melancholy. Spider guitar riffs spin into an arching glittering network over sludge drum thunder and slavering vocals. The grand edifice falls away before an interceding choir of sweet-voiced angels but the Lord of Chaos charges in to claim what’s owing to him and the track thrashes about in hopeless frenzy. Guitars blaze away, drums bang and crash and those phantom voices groan and growl in the distant background.

The band could be forgiven for a forgettable and lame closing track but “Removed Forms” does not do badly at all. Beginning as a muted minimalist piece performed on a solo guitar in the manner of a Japanese koto being plucked to the accompaniment of sorrowful female ghost voices, the track erupts into a hysterical race against the encroachment of annihilation.

Parts of the album could have been edited for length: “Convict All Flesh” does overstay its welcome in its latter half and the coda to “Phantoms” could have hurried up a little so that “Convict …” comes sooner rather than later. A section of “Removed Forms” is clunky and lumbering. All four songs are similar in their structure, beginning slowly and coasting for a while before blasting into frantic and furious BM chaos. Hardly any time to take a breath at all! Arguably also the album manipulates listeners’ feelings and emotions in the way all four songs roller-coaster through quiet and loud sections.

Overall though this is a grand and epic recording, and the Ash Borer members give the album everything they have in energy, musicianship and inspiration. The music brims with urgency and a sure knowledge that life is brief and filled with pain, and death does not necessarily bring relief.

Contact: Ash Borer, Profound Lore Records

April 22, 2013

Regnum Saturni: flowing, raging, hypnotic black metal noise intensity

Fell Voices, Regnum Saturni, Gilead Media, 2xLP RELIC45 (2013)

Fell Voices is a black metal band based in Santa Cruz (California) but often associated with the Cascadian black metal scene (northwest US / southwest British Columbia, Canada). ”Regnum Saturni” is the first album of theirs that is not named after the band or left untitled; the band has a demo and two previous albums that went without titles, which would have caused some discomfort to distributors and fans alike. Especially as songs on previous albums also had no titles! Well, on “Regnum Saturni” those little problems have now been fixed: the songs that feature now bear titles which together suggest a theme of transformation from a lower level of existence to a higher one. Listeners may well be divided over this release: whereas previous releases had definite melodies and riffs, this album may come across as unstructured and intangible, and the music appears deliberately difficult and remote. Life is not easy when you’re under the spell of Fell Voices!

All three tracks are long and on the double LP version each takes up one side of the record. This means that Side D contains nothing at all. (One would think at least it might have an interesting recording of forest bird and insect noises.) Opener “Flesh from Bone” tiptoes in quietly for a bit before suddenly plunging listeners into a roaring whirlwind of sharp guitar noise which pulses with a grinding chainsaw rhythm. Vocals can barely be heard unless they are wailing or screeching in agony. Yet the music isn’t an endless self-indulgent exercise in black metal noise drone and chaos; there is change from noise and anguish to passages of stillness and solitude, dark though they are. However such interludes are soon swept aside by more scourging music from which lead guitar riffs might arise and glimmer briefly before they are engulfed in the fierce storms.

We segue into Track 2 “Emergence” with the faintest of breaks but the mood and energy level remaining low and restrained. Soon we are tossed into a long extended black metal noise drone world, one featuring a wavering feedback drone and constant repetitive drumming. The effect can be very hypnotic even though the mood is far from serene: in fact it’s aggressive and hostile. Voices scream in pain and torment continuously, guitars wobble as if sharpening their strings on whet-stones and the percussion continues its banging rhythm without rest. This time there’s no let-up, no rest from the torture. Towards the end, the percussion becomes more thunderous and emphatic, voices still scream and the heaving guitars hang over the track.

“Dawn” is a powerful thundering track of attacking percussion and denser-than-ever clouds of black metal guitar. Whining drone, rousing drums, more howling and keening voices and that ever-present boiling guitar noise atmosphere fill your brain from ear to ear. This is a highly suffocating experience. Although the music overall doesn’t stray from the very straight and very narrow, there’s enough variation in its details to keep some, if not most, listeners tagging along. The best moments come in the last few minutes of the track: the drumming consists of thunderous rolls, the screaming becomes unearthly and the shuddering guitars assume a quieter air as gradually the track loses its pent-up fury.

The album can be an exhausting experience to hear all the way through and perhaps there was no need for it to be so long at 61 minutes. The introductions and codas don’t need to be as stretched as they are, as they are joined with only the slightest of breaks. What is most impressive about the album is its raging intensity and the musicians’ utmost dedication to their craft. They obviously don’t care about pandering to all their fans’ preferences; the music is relentlessly single-minded and its scope is very narrow. The band that springs to mind as a point of comparison is Nadja whose music in the past has been similarly noisy, intense and powerful if unvarying.

I can see this album enjoying fairly limited success among Fell Voices’ fans. I can’t see though that the band is prepared to return to a more melodic and less underground style.

Contact: Gilead Media, Vendetta Records