Swedish creator Thomas Ekelund usually arouses our sympathy for his self-confessed borderline personality disorder, which I think leads him into bouts of despair and blackness. One of his many aliases whose music we’ve enjoyed is Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, whose 2006 record for iDEAL is a classic of “lost in a fog of unknowing” type drone. However, he also records as Trepaneringsritualen, whose music is much more intense and situated more squarely in the evil zones of “industrial” and “power electronics”, producing intense blasts which repulse most sensible civilians.
For those with a taste for the raw uncut flavour of death and doom, here are two CDs which compile a number of stray tracks from his catalogue – be they cassette contributions, split LPs, digital-only emanations or unreleased items. This format is a real winner for people like Clay Ruby or Maeror Tri, or indeed any such prolific noisesters who seem to leave a trail of dead scales wherever they go, like so many reptiles. Today’s CDs are both called The Totality of Death, except one is subtitled Alpha (COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR335CD) and the other Omega (CSR336CD), and the artworks are near-symmetrical mirrors of each other printed in different colours (created under Thomas’ Nullvoid alias); and for those who savour the esoteric gesture, there are plenty of runic inscriptions to convey the idea of “ritual” that seems so important in this context. Naturally, collectors and devotees will need to own both volumes, assuming they can endure this much nihilistic desolation in one sitting.
Besides the hideous groaning and churning sounds, the titles are laced with imagery sure to induce horror among the unwary – pagan rites, esoteric and supernatural symbols, anti-Christian sentiments, violence (those ‘Nine Glistening Daggers’ aren’t designed for use by a manicurist, lemme tell ya), and even hinting at a possible “lost” Tarot card with ‘Two Crescent Moons Embrace The Sun’. Of the two, you might find the Alpha set slightly more approachable as it has a few quiet passages, but that slow intoning voice – wrenched from the backwaters of Hades – is far from comforting. The Omega set is the one to pick if you want to spend 40 mins encased in a nightmarish coma; you can virtually feel your own body slowly decaying into corruption, as you listen.
As usual, my “strong meat” warning applies; approach with caution. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for Ekelund purging himself of these negative tendencies in an artistic way; perhaps it’s arguably healthier than enforcing the suppressions of an Online Safety Act, as our government is currently doing here in the UK. (29/07/2024)