Raat, Enchantment, Italy, Flowing Downward, CD digipak limited edition / 12″ vinyl LP limited edition (2024)
Two years after its last album “Celestial Woods”, Raat sets loose another full-length atmospheric BM / post-BM humdinger in “Enchantment”. As on “Celestial Woods” and “Raison d’Être”, this album, the third for Raat, features fairly long tracks (usually five to eight minutes, with one song “Falling Stars Surround Me” extending to 10+ minutes) filled with constant activity which makes them all sonically dense. Punishing blast-beat percussion layered over with blaring heroic synthesiser melodies and background droning ambience, grinding noise guitar riffs, and the occasional clean-toned six-stringed tune delivered in a quiet setting, all presided over by an angry, raspy phantom vocal, dominates a washed-out, perhaps even ravaged soundscape. This soundscape is echoed in the choice of front cover artwork: this is a reproduction of “Souls on the Banks of Acheron” (1898) by Romanian artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl (1860 – 1933) which portrays the Greek god Hermes in his psychopomp role – erm, I see he’s nearly been cut out of the right-hand side of the picture – leading the souls of the recently deceased to the shores of the Acheron River in Hades to await the arrival of Charon.
The atmospheric BM side of Raat can be ferocious, cold and hard-hitting, especially on early tracks like “Void’s Embrace” – yet there is room also for softer, more tender and melodious moments where blackgaze / post-BM influences come to the fore. The album begins very strongly and aggressively with “Luminous Wrath”, a harsh, even vicious song that transforms midway into a more graceful and flowing piece of melancholy, and then changing again into a bloc of tough, harsh atmo-BM noise grind. Wisps of ambient melody around this and other songs add subtle shading to them, and some depth to the music overall.
As we progress through the early tracks from “Luminous Wrath” through “Void’s Embrace”, “Dreams Alight” to “Darkened Wings” with their stream-of-consciousness questing through realms of cosmic transcendence, the music becomes more open to pensive post-BM / blackgaze influences, with touches of ambient and progressive rock, though some of the early aggression and savagery is lost. Songs lack distinct riffs and melodies, and the flip-flopping between harsh atmo-BM attack and passages of melodic gloom and radiance tends to make the tracks sound more similar than different. Later songs like “Pure Spirit” and “Falling Stars Surround Me” have a lighter, more cheery and optimistic mood but by the time we reach these tracks, some of our fellow listeners may have fallen away due to the arduous nature of the journey through earlier songs. Even then, “Falling Stars …” can be a very lumbering track, repetitive in parts, with the vocals nearly drowned out by the jackhammer drumming and guitar churn. Bonus track “Reflection” is an all-instrumental piece of weepy acoustic guitar melody wreathed in soft ambient drone and a slight sunny shimmer, with just enough of a dark unexpectedly mechanical undertone to give the album’s conclusion an ambiguous air.
Compared to earlier albums, “Enchantment”, despite its name, has a harsh sound which flattens the songs a little and robs them of some of their depth and subtlety. At this point in Raat’s career, the vocals probably should be more upfront than they have been before, especially as the lyrics are important and contribute to their respective songs’ melancholy and moods. Even in later songs with their more mellow nature, nearly all the lyrics gravitate towards despair and hopelessness in a universe that has no care or sympathy for the living beings it creates. The only thing to wish for is a death that is not too painful, or which offers a hope, however brief, of peace before sensation is lost entirely or another life cycle with all its sorrows and alienation begins.
The album may be a grand achievement technically, but my impression is that Raat has hit a crossroads in its musical and lyrical development and progress. To stay fresh and vital, Raat all-round musician Sushant Rawat will need to rethink, perhaps even change the project’s style and themes.