Valtakunta, Contemplation, Canada, Bent Window Records, CD (2024)
If you look carefully at the front cover art for “Contemplation”, the fourth album from Finnish occult black metal act Valtakunta, you’ll discover a horrific suicide scene – and that’s the point of this work: the free-form nature of the noisy music, ranging through noise, trance and psychedelic influences and elements, might suggest an uplifting outlook promising transcendence and hope, but the craggy death-rattle vocals and the arrangement of the track titles actually warn of emptiness, dark horror and the resulting despair that follow after such revelation. After releasing four albums over a nine-year period since the first self-titled debut came out in June 2015, Valtakunta remains a mysterious act and the only thing I can say for sure is that this album and the previous third album “Ylösnousemus” (Finnish for “resurrection) feature contributions from Antti Klemi from fellow Finnish BM act Circle of Ouroborus. On “Ylösnousemus”, Klemi contributed vocals mostly but on some tracks on “Contemplation” he also plays guitars, drums and synthesisers. Nevertheless, Valtakunta maintains a distinct style of desolate BM experimentation even as that band draws closer to Circle of Ouroborus in its worldview and existential despair and dismay.
Opening track “The Temple of Our Reincarnation” is a sterling work of continuous blackened noise fury and thunder, dominated by burning tremolo guitar, crashing percussion work and a roaring demonic vocal hidden in a chamber kilometres deep underground. The drone / trance chaos and erratic drumwork continue in “Through Stones, Roots and Lepers” with a clearer (and thus even more horrific) vocal though some people just might find the howling guitar feedback tiresome and distracting from the drumming. “Necromantic Delusions” admittedly doesn’t sound much different, but it appears more focused as the guitars and percussion work together rather than against each other and a definite mood is established.
The last two tracks “Void Soul” and “Contemplation” are the two glories of the album – or, depending on your viewpoint, the most harrowing tracks – as the vocals rise to screams and suffocating keyboards join the guitars and thundering drums in their cacophony. At least everything is less chaotic than previously, with the guitars now playing definite riffs, and melancholy and sadness now suffusing the cold space-ambient synthesiser drones and the other raucous music. Whatever sounds and noises appear now have a clear purpose, right down to the end lingering drone guitar notes. The final title track appears to start in a hypnotic trance state, and for a few minutes you feel as though held in a taut embrace, ready to drop anywhere and everywhere, yet the music holds tight and steady. The screaming may be the most horrifying part of the track – come to think of it, it may be the ghastliest element in the entire recording – as it rants and vents its spleen in some enclosed tomb in another dimension. In its second half the music – mostly blackened noise / space drone psychedelia – reaches a shrill climax, with the drums banging away and the guitars and synths roaring up a storm of feedback howl and power electronics drill noise.
Bent Windows Records’ Bandcamp page did promise dismay and demented horror with this album, and I will admit the music can be unbearable in its extreme noise terror stance. The first three tracks play as though the musicians are fumbling in the black noise chaos and trying to find a balance between what they’re doing, so they can do what needs doing – but once they’ve achieved their balance, even though that happens quite late in the album, there’s simply no stopping them as they charge through a fraught soundscape and push into another dimension, leaving little more than purrs and rumbles behind. Behind the horror, the bleakness and the despair though, there’s still a quality, hard to pin down, that is exhilarating and enthralling enough for listeners to follow all the way through, though the path be strewn with extreme danger and deception.