Tagged: doom

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 14, 2013

Walking Woods

Composer Daniel Stearns freely owns up to the peculiar mental state of “dissociation”, which manifests itself as unusual occasions or experiences in his life from time to time, strange visitations which have descended upon his psyche since as long as he can remember. He takes heart in the fact that other mystics, scholars, writers and musicians in history appear to have been subjected to similar episodes, among them William James, Emerson, Charles Ives, Sigurd Olson and the Outsider artist Adolf Wolfli. Now on Golden Town (SPECTROPOL SpecT 03), he attempts to find musical expression for the semi-visionary outlook he receives in his detached states, and fourteen tracks of decidedly strange and distinctive music are the result. From the first track onwards, the music evokes mental detachment and an uncanny sense of world-going-wrongness before your very ears. Stearns was encouraged in his project not only by Bruce Hamilton but by the composer Steve Moshier, whom he met through online social media. The CD appears to be linked quite strongly to Stearns’ visual effluvia, a tack which leads us to consider his interest in lo-fi photography (typically using cellphones) to create singular images that appear to be suffused with more meaning and hidden depths than their original subject matter ever contained. Reading the compelling sleeve notes on this release does start to engender a not-unpleasant mind-sapping sensation, as though the layers of reality are starting to flake away and small chinks appear in the fabric that separates us all from the Great Beyond. The music / sound art on the CD is likewise quite unsettling, a queasy mix of semi-identifiable field recordings with wobbly electronic music and some intensive post-production techniques. At its best Golden Town does indeed come close to ushering the listener into the private world of Daniel Stearns, which he describes metaphorically as “an insular place at the far end of a dark wood” which he arrived at after “walking down a mountain I never knew I’d climbed”, with its extreme disorienting methods and highly dreamlike, somnambulistic tone. The label praises the “trance states” and “hypnotic pattern layers” of this unusual record. From 13 June 2012.

The lovely Dan Peck is the New York radical artist who has found the missing connection between jazz music and doom metal. He expresses this discovery using the tuba, playing in a trio called The Gate who we first heard on the 2009 LP Acid Soil with its great zombie skeleton cover. Now here they are again on Destruction of Darkness (CARRIER RECORDS CARRIER 015), Peck with his brass beast, the bassist Tom Blancarte and drummer Brian Osborne. Three lengthy tracks of depressing, intense and slow-moving sludge are created, almost unbelievably, through acoustic methods. I say “unbelievably” because in form and surface, this music is uncannily close to heavy sludge rock made with guitars and amplifiers. Stephen O’Malley had better look to his laurels! This micro-genre has been dubbed “doom jazz” by the experts, a fitting nomenclature, and The Gate do it far more convincingly than The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, even though the latter have the musical style embedded in their name. ¹ If you like deeply resonant bass and sub-bass tones that can slough the skin off a Burmese python at fifteen paces, with enough presence to flatten a mountain range into Play-Doh, then this is the record for you. Peck’s method, which incidentally is composed rather than improvised and partly indebted to the work of Hungarian composer György Kurtág, is horrifyingly effective when set to a relentless march beat as on ‘Aeons Of Decay’, but also doubly fatal on ‘Frozen Gods’ where for the first half of its 23-minute stretch, the tuba just sits there and growls menacingly in jet-black rumbling tones, its bad-tempered sighs sometimes joined by the equally disgruntled upright bass sawing out snarls and grunts from the lower depths. It’s not just the glorious sound of this record that’s so compelling, but the way it contains all the nuances of improvisatory rapport and compositional structure that makes it so satisfying a listen. I suppose ‘Buried Blasphemy’ is the liveliest cut here and is the one to spin to your extreme metal-freak friends with their strange haircuts and pieces of metal embedded in their noses and lips. ² If they arrive at the party clutching their boring records by Cult Of Luna, Neurosis and Mastodon in their heavily-ringed fists, then give ‘em a dose of this monster and watch ‘em drop dead. From 23 April 2012 and highly recommended.

When not working solo as TL0741, Pat Gillis is one half of Northern Machine with the bass player Bill Warford. The duo poured most of their energy into studio-based records for a while, until they found they could wreak their droning noise on stage and made a leap into releasing live recordings, staring with 2004′s Staalhertz. In Front Of The Crowd (HC3 MUSIC HC3NMCD9) is also live music, a compilation of ten examples of their craft made in the period 2005-2009, realised using keyboards, percussion, tape loops and various electronic effects; all the individual voices of these instruments, most especially the “singing metals” of Warford, do tend to lose some of their definition in the overall droney murk, sometimes resulting in rather nightmarish effects as the frequencies swirl together like nine types of liquid glue. I get the impression the pair are very good at working their way intuitively through the twin swamps of aggressive noise and effects-drenched drone, but the intention in the live work was to introduce some repeatable elements and a tad more structure to the enterprise. Unfortunately these good intentions appear to have succumbed to the compelling effects of loud amplification, and while the record has its moments of good solid assaultive chunkery and mysterious sojourns in a dreamy dark-ambient state, the music becomes quite samey and dull towards the end of the album. Despite the often compelling surfaces, I just don’t hear enough risk-taking or moments of real danger in the playing. One title at least, ‘Circuit Parasite’, seems indicative of their approach; one often has the impression of electronic equipment simply feeding off itself. From 13 June 2012.

Sadly they are an example of a band who cannot possibly live up to their own name. ↩
I of course have many such acquaintances in my coterie, to a man all named Zach and covered with so many tattoos that their arms resemble walking museums of scrimshaw work. ↩

April 10, 2013

Mother: ambient raw black metal in a vast and ancient landscape of flat plains, dry heat and the threat of fire

Cicadan, Mother, US, Eternal Warfare, cassette (2013)

Cicadan is a recent black metal act based in Cobram, located on the Victorian side of the Murray River in southeast Australia. Helmed by Shamus Toomath, Cicadan plays doomy black metal with ambient, drone and experimental / abstract music influences. “Mother” is the debut album, featuring three tracks whose titles suggest a description of a 24-hour period somewhere in Australia during a time when European settlers were yet to arrive and change the landscape forever.

Cobram’s Wikipedia entry says its climate is a Mediterranean-type one with hot dry summers and cool wet winters averaging 300 days of sunshine a year. This balmy background would hardly favour the rise of black metal bands, let alone one as intense, powerful and sullen as Cicadan. Yet this first recording is a dark and smouldering one. The album is a creature of its surroundings: each track is topped and tailed with field recordings of the natural environment of Toomath’s home town. Chittering birds and insects like cicadas, from which the project obtains its name, and the deep stillness of the Australian bush form the underlying inspiration for the music. Something of the flat expanses of the Australian continent is captured in the album’s more meditative moments. Lyrics in all three songs hint at the endless cycles of life and regeneration of nature in a long history. Something about the lyrics reminds me of Al Cisneros’ writing for Om: it’s a bit hypnotic and a little remote, and there’s a hint of change that leads to a heightened awareness of nature’s connection to the cosmos.

“Day” has a hot and dry start of insects chirping loudly and birds sheltering in the tree canopy. The acoustic guitar introduction is lethargic under the weight of the heat. It soon weighs into the steely acid grind of the black metal guitar which falls like heavy rain across the sonic landscape. The pace is slow and majestic with powerful droning doom guitar and an ugly chanting BM vocal. “Dusk” is similar to “Day” in its basic structure: a soft melodic guitar introduction builds into a shimmering and malevolent piece with spiky lead guitar solo melody and muttering demon voice. Droning riffs add some variation and tension to the music. The track is creepy with a regular loop of reverb-touched clicks appearing early and gradually coming to define the song’s structure and atmosphere. It all becomes post-rock in a way reminiscent of the Cascadian black metal scene with a choir of ghostly voices and the sounds of nature following a melancholy lead guitar tune.

The real glory of the album is “Night (Dendronic Pessimism)”, the shortest of the three songs but the most varied and atmospheric. It’s very powerful in its long booming drone riffs against a background of burning black metal rhythm guitar. Quiet acoustic banjo or mandolin-like strings with night-time ambience and a spoons percussion rhythm feature for a brief time. The piece fades into crackling fire.

With a sound palette that includes BM-guitar rain showers, huge deep sonic bass booms and competent drumming that doesn’t appear to be programmed, Cicadan has a rich foundation for his music to really soar. At present the songs here aren’t greatly different from one another in their basic elements and structure, and their differentiation lies in the field recordings and the quieter, more introspective acoustic music sections attached to them. There is huge potential for Cicadan to become much bigger and more well-known outside Australia but he needs more music composition practice. Writing music in conventional song structure formats might be worthwhile to enable him to understand more about building up tension and emotion to maintain listener interest, and to appreciate better the freedom and limitations that unconventional music structures have. Sometimes in order to break the rules, you have to know and obey them first. A couple of tracks on “Mother” don’t have very obvious climaxes and the music starts to tail away too soon with the result that endings seem to take forever.

If Cicadan can improve his music composition skills and gain experience playing the music live, he will be an unstoppable force in Australian black metal, the equal of acts like Elysian Blaze and Striborg in their intense and idiosyncratic approaches to the genre.

Contact: Eternal Warfare

March 13, 2013

The Grain: country music was never so massive or monumental as this homage to wheat fields

Slomo, The Grain, Trilithon, TRCD05 (2012)

Here are two very stretched-out tracks of creeping, repetitive droning music that revolve around an agricultural theme, in this case, endless fields of rippling, ripening waves of wheat and wheat only. The longer track at 42 minutes is “The Grain” and the shorter is, surprisingly or perhaps not surprisingly, “Against the Grain”. I wonder what message the duo Slomo intended by those track titles: are they telling us that for all the seemingly endless ocean of wheat offered by the first track, there is something wrong and unnatural about the idea of vast swathes of countryside dominated completely by one species of plant – and possibly one with a small gene pool resulting from endless inbreeding through its generations – and that only one small virus or fungus might be enough to spread through all those hectares of cereal and destroy it completely?

The title track is a vast, sprawling and repetitive piece notable mainly for its unrelenting and often tedious monotony but that may be precisely Slomo’s intention, to call our attention to the cereal-based monoculture that dominates Western agriculture and which itself contributes to many global economic, political and social crises facing the world today. The industrial feel of the ambient music alludes to modern cereals’ total dependence on petroleum-based fertiliser and manufactured pesticides, of which genetic modifications might be considered an extension, to grow and thrive. The deep rumbles might call our attention to the havoc such industrial props and GM cropping might be having on soils, soil quality and the underground ecosystems that nourish the soil, purify groundwater and help to maintain the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles.

“Against the Grain” is more mechanical and rather tense in its rhythmic whirrings. This might suggest a more intensive, invasive form of human intervention in the wheat’s production in the form of genetic manipulation. Ominous rumbling drones warn of the dangers that might strike ecosystems and the health of plants, animals and ultimately humans if GM cropping goes ahead without long-term test trials monitoring its effects on soil, other plants and humans when they are in contact with the plants. Or perhaps those rumbles suggest pesticide-resistant insects continuing to bore away into the grain’s husk, oblivious to any notion that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by companies on chemicals that were meant to blow the little varmints away. This starts as a mild track, initially calm if a little ambiguous, but gradually becomes strained with two parallel sets of drones, one very steely and strung-out, the other super-calm and suggesting a massive though vaguely defined presence in the music.

More likely to induce awe and respect than love, this music is monumental within its defined scope and structure. Perfect for lulling away quiet afternoons out in the countryside, watching grass sway in the breeze, thinking of insects feeding on grass blades or pollen and going about their business … All music is credited by its creators Holy McGrail and Howard Marsden to guitars, woodwind instruments and synthesisers.

Contact: Slomo, Trilithon Records

March 10, 2013

Old Earth: four-part opus doesn’t quite satisfy as jazz / death metal chamber music piece

Ehnahre, Old Earth, Crucial Blast, CD CBR99 (2011)

Ehnahre are new to me but this trio from Boston, Massachusetts, has been active since 2008 when they released their debut full-length album. These guys play an unstructured and doom-influenced style of death metal that’s very close to heavy improv jazz. “Old Earth” is the group’s third album and is based on a short essay by 20th century Irish avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett. The album consists of one piece broken up into four tracks or movements and by that structure derives as much of its inspiration from forms of classical and chamber music as it does from jazz, doom, hardcore and death metal. Guest musicians include trumpet players Greg Kelley and Forbes Graham, and the ever-trusty eminence grise studio engineer and sometime musician James Plotkin turns up on mastering duties. The guys sometimes come across as sounding a bit like Japan’s slow-burning doomsters Corrupted mixed in with some of their more extreme jazz / improv / metal brethren like Boredoms, Fushitsusha and Ruins.

After a warm-up introduction which includes something that sounds like a distant radio recording of a singer followed by a forlorn piano melody, the threesome play some very quiet guitar and noodle about for several minutes. At the half-way point, the track finally explodes into some fiery spitfire jazz death metal separated by passages of sulky guitar meditations. A haggard death metal vocal yells out lyrics based on the Beckett text while bass guitar surges forward on long booming drone, drums keep busy on fast rhythms and guitars either follow the bass guitar.

The second movement is a mood piece that privileges a chamber music style with the use of double bass as a solo instrument in parts. The clear production on this track underlines the decision to play the track as an acoustic piece. With the solo double bass followed by solo electric guitar, the track appears disjointed and the momentum built up by the first movement is lost. Late in the track, Kelley and Graham join in on trumpets but their performance is very subsidiary to the lead guitar and listeners could query whether the guest musicians are really needed at all.

Doomy death metal credibility is regained in the third movement but at this point I wonder why Ehnahre risked doing a long second piece that takes away all the energy and aggression of the first movement only to have to claw it all back in the third. By the time we reach Track 3, we are two-thirds of the way through the album. After a short, edgy piece marked by stealthy rhythm, the fourth movement comes as a dive into an existential inferno with the main vocalist screaming in torment.

This is an interesting album but the music is very uneven: the first two movements are long, each well over ten minutes, while the last two pieces fit entirely into the running-time of Track 1. You’d normally expect the third movement to be very important because in a four-movement work, the third must build on the efforts of the previous two movements in intensity and tension to a gut-wrenching climax; the fourth movement deals with the climax itself and the consequences that follow, and then it would just tidy all the loose ends and clean up the splatter on the floor and walls. We don’t get anything of the sort here on “Old Earth”. The flow of tension and energy across the album is uneven: the first movement did well in building up that tension but the second track lost it. This means that the third track has the unenviable job of performing its traditional function plus pick up that tension and conflict in the space of five minutes! “Old Earth” ends up being a lesser album than it could have been. There is not one God-Almighty tension-releasing pyrotechnics display anywhere here: the recording is more or less low-key throughout. Your listening experience will be an intriguing one at times but it’ll also be frustrating.

As a metal album, “Old Earth” certainly proves there’s plenty of life in doom and death metal when they come into contact with avant-garde jazz. It’s a bit of a shame though that Ehnahre seem too enamoured with the idea of playing with the structure of the music to upset expectations of how music builds up to a climax and then comes down, and somewhere in the middle lets go of some tension before climbing up again. Sometimes there are things you just should not deconstruct just for the hell of it, even with unstructured and out-there music.

Contact: Crucial Blast Recordings

February 19, 2013

Bong (self-titled): music to harness mental power for secret ceremonies

Bong, Bong, Ritual Productions, CD RIT018 (2009, reissued 2012)

Reissued in 2012 with an extra track “Asleep” that makes the album nearly twice as long as it was originally, this self-titled debut album from the aptly named Bong is a mighty droning work that might well reference Sleep in its low sonorous vocals and intensely circular music. The original album was split into two tracks of roughly equal length, “Wizards of Krull” and “The Starlit Grotto”. There are very minimal lyrics attached to these two tracks and they spell scenes in faraway lands of faraway times, in which despotic rulers used rite and magic to keep populations in thrall while secret cults gather in underground caves to pass messages to one another in obscure codes and hieroglyphs. The recording is slow, stately to the point of being ponderous and is even arduous: droning stoner rock does not come easily no matter what listeners think!

“Wizards of Krull” could be a rite in itself, with the hypnotic looping music intended to put you in a trance so that you enter Krull and observe the ceremonies performed, maybe even participate in them. (Just so long as you’re not the sacrificial lamb.) While percussion and rhythm guitar pound out the monotonous and sometimes harrowing rhythms, lead guitar sounds out like shofars calling worshippers to attention. Low droning voices intone the sacred messages to send all in a deep meditative state, concentrating their mental energies on pushing the rituals as far as they will go.

“The Starlit Grotto” is a very gradual piece that accumulates, bit by tiny bit, flotsam and jetsam of musical fragments and beats on a very basic structure of pulsing bass notes that repeat over and over. A spoken vocal breaks the solemn spell cast by the music: it’s as if we had been waiting for a large enough gathering of spirits or people in meditation for an atmosphere to develop that will conduct power generated by thought and mindfulness to wherever the congregation wishes it to go. Quiet concentrated and single-minded intensity is the hallmark of this track, emphasised by licks and then melodies of sitar, long sinuous bass drone and deep resonating chanting vocals. Tempting to think these spirits or people have gathered in the hidden cave to plot against the repressive rule of the wizards over the land of Krull.

Bonus track “Asleep” is at once similar to and different from the previous two tracks. In structure it’s just as minimal and restricted: a basic rhythm structure of repeating prolonged bass tones, simple drumming and a pounding beat suggesting an endurance test of sorts. The track develops slowly by building up instrumentation and has the feel of a intense ritual. The difference is that there’s also a darker and less welcoming, more sinister and forbidding mood. The singing seems more inhuman, and guitars and a thin buzzy drone suggest an spacey alien atmosphere high above and below.

All three tracks are very atmospheric and mesmerising, incredibly focussed and intense. If there’s a fault, it is that the tracks are very low-key and, for some listeners, will probably be frustrating as they have no definite tension-releasing climaxes after long build-ups. If listeners pay very close attention, they will sense a turning-point after which a track will ease off and start to end. Codas may take some time to finish and even when silence appears, the ambience still takes time to disappear.

The band’s sound is quite clear, revealing a huge cavern of space in which the secret ceremonies are held and sinister figures in black sit or stand together to meditate and join their minds to create and sustain an unseen yet felt power. “Asleep” has a bluesy feel which at times gives the track a slight air of melancholy, even desperation, which might be unintended.

The debut album is a good start to what so far has turned out to be a steadily rising career, similar to the music itself, for Bong. Keep your ears close to the ground, men of Bong, the crescendo may soon reach its peak.

Contact: Ritual Productions

December 6, 2012

Windhand: in danger of becoming a Sabbath clone, and a tired one at that

Windhand, self-titled, Forcefield Records, CDGRIMM25 (2012)

A sure sign that Windhand traffick in no-nonsense straight-ahead retro doom metal is the album cover of a rural scene in black silhouette, the branches of trees drawn in such a way as to suggest spidery fingers stretching outwards, against a purple background; this recalls Black Sabbath album covers of similar minimal two-toned design and a pastoral scene. The album is solemn riff-heavy doom with a powerful sound that contrasts with a clear high vocal, courtesy of one Dorthia Cottrell who is set somewhat far back in the mix so the lyrics are rather hard to make out unless the album is played very loudly.

“Black Candles” leads off with a slight ambient intro into the track proper which is mostly repetitive riff loop with a touch of echoing effect to give the song an occasional psychedelic feel. Although the riff is very strong, the song as a whole feels very enervated; the bland singing doesn’t enliven it much. Likewise, “Libusen” is steady-as-it-goes with a heavy riff that repeats over and over without much variation while Cottrell wails at close to the high end of her range far into the distance. It’s a graceful song, slow and majestic, and if it were a bit slower with more drawn-out droning tones and icy-cold space ambient effects, it would be an excellent song indeed.

“Heap Wolves” perks up with more melodic riffs and Cottrell’s siren vocals sounding off over the sinister roiling music and oily lead guitar. It’s clear that this lady is not only Windhand’s best asset but has the potential to be Queen Bee of female doom metal vocalists if the band can raise its profile higher among the US doom metal community and beyond; on all tracks, Cottrell commands attention even though her vocal range barely strays from the higher end and her style is basically a wailing one. If she can experiment with her style more and use the lower, deeper end of her vocal range on future songs, she is sure to go a very long way.

Individual songs are quite good without being outstanding but when put together, the album feels very tired for some reason. Part of the problem may be that Cottrell’s vocals are so far back in the mix in most songs and are so restricted in the range of sounds that for some listeners she can sound the same from one song to the next. The singing is bland and needs an injection of aggression to roughen up the tone now and again. Songs tend to be much the same in basic structure, all dependent on repeating riffs and time-keeping drums with the obligatory lead guitar solo; they rarely vary in pace and mood. There is a danger that Windhand will fall into the category of Sabbath clones of which there are far too many already. Outro track “Winter Sun” suggests in some instrumental parts that the musicians aren’t averse to improvising and playing about with their sound and upsetting people’s expectations of what a doom band should do. Some individual members in the band have talent that should be stretched a lot further.

It’s quite possible though that with this debut, Windhand are playing a bit safe and perhaps on the second album they will show us what they’re really made of.

Contact: Forcefield Records

November 18, 2012

Faemin: a solid and dependable sludge doom metal effort

Process of Guilt, Fæmin, Bleak Recordings (2012)

“Fæmin” is the third album by the doom metal band Process of Guilt who hail from Evora in Portugal. Five songs in all dwell on and explore states of mind and being such as emptiness and despair. One-word titles taken together separately from the lyrics suggest a narrative of sinning, reaping the consequences of sin, doing penance and achieving a state beyond … which turns out not necessarily to be grace.

“Empire” is a grand opener to the album, heralded by long drone, a repeating ringing riff and immense thundering percussion beats. The song builds up slowly and steadily, ratcheting up the tension and atmospheric intensity with deft changes and variations in the beats, and occasionally dispelling unease through crashing cymbals and accompanying guitar slash riffs. The vocal is raw and roaring when it appears but much of the track is instrumental. There is just enough guitar in the background in the song’s first half to lend an edgy, abrasive noise texture to proceedings, otherwise that part of the track is almost completely dominated by percussion. Suddenly the tension breaks forth and guitars and drums literally gush out with force and pent-up fury and vocalist Hugo Santos roars out his anger.

The harsh guitar noise textures continue into “Blindfold” which is a plea to face the truth of one’s existence and discontinue living a life based on lies, greed and cowardice. The percussion is strong and seems to encourage the rest of the music to flow. Now lead guitar is allowed to soar high in piercing anguished tones. The climax erupts in wave after wave of guitar molasses driven by rolling drums, and soon the song ends on a prolonged guitar feedback drone that links to “Harvest”: this is a stately dark piece with a screeching guitar feedback echo in some parts and a screaming vocal amid rather more laid-back drumming than what’s gone before and a harsh steely guitar noise layer. The lead guitar has a slightly wobbly tone that introduces a slight feeling of fear and impending horror.

“Cleanse” appears to be a warning of doom to those of us who continue living by falsehood: the song is suitably doomy in its use of space and echo to sculpt the guitar tones and riffs and induce a sense of darkening despair as the world starts to cave in on us. The percussion sticks to its usual time-keeping function while lead guitar blats clear-toned resonant riffs and a grinding bass rhythm provides the harshness that adds to the song’s sense of impending fate. The song breaks into a rolling climax which ends on an extended feedback drone, similar to “Blindfold” in its ending.

The title track is a strong crunchy conclusion to the album and the messages it has thrown up along the way: the song expresses total despair at the physical and existential darkness that has engulfed humanity, perhaps forever.

“Fæmin” is a solid and dependable effort where the musicians know exactly what to do and what’s expected of them, and deliver precisely to those expectations. Songs are fairly similar in their structure: they build up and up on repeating riffs and constant rhythms to a climax that opens the flood-gates and allows the reined-in tension and anger to rush through but in a controlled way. Songs may end abruptly or sound off on an extended high-pitched feedback drone. The style of music seems to be as much influenced by hardcore elements as sludge doom and death metal; there is real if restrained anger in the vocals and the music is very straightforward and business-like. Rarely does the lead guitar zing off on unexpected solo journeys. Everyone works to a common cause and there’s no deviation.

Contact: Bleak Recordings, Process of Guilt

November 10, 2012

V: best work by two soul music brothers

KTL, V, Editions Mego, CD eMEGO 120 (2012)
For a band that formed in 2007 to score music for a play “Kindertotenlieder” (hence the name KTL) by Dennis Cooper and Gisele Vienne, KTL has come a long way indeed; I thought the duo would be good for a couple of albums at least but it looks like I vastly underestimated the potential of these guys to keep coming up with new ideas and material. This fifth full-length album marks out new sonic territory: no longer are KTL simply a fusion of doom drone metal and glitchy laptop electronics but PITA and SOMA are revealed as true soul music brothers who keep pushing each other into something new and different whenever they are together. PITA has grown enormously as a musician and person and likely the same can be said for SOMA as evinced on this album where he plays synthesiser, laptop electronics and sound effects with a contact mic as well as guitar.

First track “Phill 1″ which might be a dedication to one of KTL’s musical heroes Phil Niblock is a slow-burning atmospheric piece of deep, dark, complex mood. We move quickly into “Study A”, an intense and seemingly static work that actually changes a great deal; the sounds individually may be harsh, piercing, shrill and discomfiting but together they induce a sense of concentrated stillness. The extended drones are beautifully sculpted and sustain themselves with a quiet certainty as they soar heavenwards, perhaps to upset the age-old hierarchy of the angels and introduce a new sinister regime those winged wussies have never known. “Tony” is a more foreboding track similar to SOMA’s work with Sunn0))) and if I hadn’t known what the track was when I first heard it, I would have said this is a Sunn0))) track from around the period when that band and Boris were recording “Altar” together. It consists of an extended guitar drone with soft sub-bass sighing in and out, and ghostly washes and undersea echoes and booms welling up from below six fathoms deep; to most people, that may not sound like much but the track is highly absorbing and listeners may find themselves falling and sinking into its deep embrace.

“Phill 2″ is a seesawing loop of orchestrated strings, horns and electronics, courtesy of composer Johann Johannsson who added double bass, cello and violin sounds to KTL’s echoes and ghostly sound washes. The piece reminds me of Aethenor’s first album which had something of a ghost ship theme (or so it sounded to me) and of course Aethenor is one of SOMA’s experimental collaborative projects. It’s repetitive but each repeated loop changes significantly from its predecessor in increasing volume, sense of horror and epic quality. The deep bassy loop snakes from one end of the work to the other and booms out from time to time, giving the impression of a leviathan monster swimming in the briny depths, snaking in and out of clouds of misty sediment. Sharpish-sounding horns add a majestic soundtrack quality to the work. The whole grand juggernaut comes to a satisfying climax of opposites that destroy each other as they merge, producing a completely new being of bright shattering revelation.

“Last Spring: A Prequel” is a sound art piece created for an art installation by Gisele Vienne of the same name and features a monologue performance by Jonathan Capdevielle who appears to play two characters using a clean voice and a gravelly, almost death metal voice respectively. The monologue is done in French but unfortunately there are no translations in English, German or any other language for non-Francophone folks to follow. While this is going on, an eerie drone hovers like a distant puttering UFO far in the background and strange phantom rumbles and crackles sound off whenever Capdevielle comes close to being hysterical and deranged. This gives the entire piece a murky, uncertain underwater feel and enhances JC’s performance in such a way as to suggest that we might be deep in his brain observing two voices at war and turning his psyche into a battleground between two forces of psychotic evil.

This album is a completely unexpected and welcome surprise from KTL: I had not anticipated that PITA and SOMA would progress so much together and individually with this project. The album is hugely atmospheric with many moods suggestive of dark hazy and murky underwater realms where malevolent serpentine creatures unknown to science lurk, ready to snatch a human victim and shoot away, never to return. “V” might very well be the best work the two have done together.

Contact: Editions Mego

November 7, 2012

The Feather tipped the Serpent’s Scale: album inspired by vivid and unusual concept

Eagle Twin, The Feather tipped the Serpent’s Scale, US, Southern Lord, CD (2012)

Reading the fine print on the gatefold sleeve of this, Eagle Twin’s second album, and seeing ” … This album marks the conclusion of a deep, sometimes dark, shared personal journey for all involved …”, I was, I admit, afraid that this heralded the end of the desert doom metal rockers but from what I’ve seen on the Internet, Eagle Twin are in for the long haul but perhaps in a different, if no less thoughtful and literary direction. Members Gentry Densley and Tyler Smith draw lyrical inspiration from poet Ted Hughes, the Biblical story of Job who had to suffer endlessly and undergo a transformation in his relationship to God, the 20th century Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Compared to the first album “The Unkindness of Crows” which was dedicated to our favourite black birds that fought the sun and were scorched during the battle, “The Feather tipped the Serpent’s Scale” is a cleaner, almost rock’n'roll affair though still very heavy, dark and monumental. Here, the crows burnt by the sun are thrown back to Earth in the form of black snakes and must stay in their reptilian forms until they can be reborn and reclaim their true heritage.

The 18-minute “The Ballad of Job Cain”, cut into two 9-minute halves, is a roiling noisy work mixing quite complex percussion rhythms and beats derived from progressive jazz with twisting and tortured guitar drone chords. The atmosphere is intense, burning and malevolent. There’s a bit of throat-singing at the beginning which unfortunately doesn’t appear elsewhere on the album. Gentry Densley’s vocals still can descend very low to subterranean depths; his deep gravelly voice, as slow as the music is serpentine, matches the vivid horror of the images of the two birds falling, condemned to crawl on the ground on their bellies. This two-parter is a restless beast, flitting from slow to mid-paced, filled with tension and turmoil, mirroring the agonies that the birds feel as they die and are reborn. (Well, one of them anyway as the other is called Cain and can never die – but of his fate, I remain in the dark as the album concentrates on his mortal brother’s destiny.)

“Lorca (Adan)” is a quieter and more measured affair: a sluggish pace and steady pace carry the almost dirge-like music dominated by long scything chords and Densley’s singing. About halfway through the track erupts in fury and there’s an extended instrumental section of controlled though simmering guitar aggression. The track segues into “Snake Hymn” through a cloud of searing hot guitar feedback noise; this is a major highlight of the album, very distorted in sound and featuring some incredible volume dynamics as the music dives into the quietest of quiet moments only to break out in a loud crash of abrasive guitar crunch and solid sub-bass riffing. Past the halfway mark, the track gets very chuggy with drums providing the driving force that energises Densley’s guitar-playing which sends out forceful flashes of guitar tone and melody.

We’re well and truly in the realms of snake mythology and symbolism by now, epitomised by “Horn-Snake-Horn”, a slow-burning piece on the mystical connections among snakes, fertility and renewal. Track 6 picks up the renewal theme and extends it into a legend of death and regeneration in which the mighty horned serpent heroically gives up its body to become mountains, landscapes, trees and ultimately birds. The epilogue in which he returns to life is celebratory for the most part but still has a dark mood. The bird has atoned for his past arrogance and presumption, and has sacrificed himself for the betterment of his fellow creatures and environment (this means he created of himself the Garden of Eden – what a hoot!); but it seems still that he has hard lessons to learn as a new path stretches before him – and what has happened to his brother in the meantime?

Most tracks are quite long and very busy, and sitting through the album in one hit, even though it’s actually less than an hour long, can be quite exhausting. It is truly an assault on the ears with complex jazz-influenced percussion rhythms and writhing guitar riffs and chords. The standard of playing and the level of consistency are very high; there is not one moment here that is wasted or should be edited for length. Eagle Twin have delivered an excellent album inspired by a strong, vivid and unusual concept redolent of Old Testament Bible absolutism, desert despair, snake symbolism and redemption through self-sacrifice. Aspiring young musicians, take note: all the technical prowess you can muster is as nothing if you don’t have a good theme or subject that can push you to creative and energetic heights.

I only wish – and here my gripes are my own personal preferences – that there was more throat-singing, that sometimes the music could be a bit cold to bring out the transformed birds’ new reptilian behaviour and nature, and that the album could blow out intensely hot and dry desert atmosphere along with cold, sliding leathery scales.

Contact: Southern Lord