May 012016
 

Sea of Bones-Silent Transmissions

 

Most of the music in this Shades of Black series comes from the realms of black metal, but not all of it. Music can be black for other reasons as well, as demonstrated by the first of the four bands featured here.

This is a collection of songs that have been keeping me company in recent dark days. Until I decided to add the fourth band, I was going to call this Shades of Black — Long-Form Edition, because the songs by the first three bands are indeed much longer than average. They convincingly earn the extra minutes, and I hope you’ll carve out some space for them.

SEA OF BONES

As far as these selfish ears are concerned, far too much time has passed since New Haven’s Sea of Bones released their last album, The Earth Wants Us Dead. At last, we have something new.

 

Sea of Bones live
I’m in that audience somewhere, with a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face…

 

On April 15 the band released on Bandcamp a single song named “Silent Transmission“. It lasts for 27 1/2 minutes. The band explain that “it was completely improvised on the spot” and “recorded in one take with no overdubs”, which makes an already impressive piece of music even more impressive.

The music is hypnotic and harrowing — a nightmarish, otherworldly, soul-reaping experience that proves to be transfixing. It builds gradually, beginning with low, layered droning tones mixed with the occasional scratch of static and other sounds that warble, pulsate, and shimmer. The sounds become increasingly dense, dark, and hypnotic, and then they subside, as isolated, reverberating guitar and bass notes come in.

The slow, rhythmic patter of drums emerges along with the buzzing of a guitar — and the distortion swells in volume, growing abrasive, building to a squall, as the simple repeating notes stitch together a grim, looping melody. This is the first in a series of simple, musically related melodic motifs that appear at different times over the course of the song. Simple, yes, but they seize your attention, perhaps because what separates them tends to be so cacophonous.

The riffing becomes hallucinatory, the drums begin to hammer, the squall of distortion grows more intense, and a searing high guitar comes in, demented and disturbing (there might also be some howling vocals in the distant background, but it’s hard to be sure)  The drums grab onto a repeating rhythm within the haze of guitar distortion.

At the mid-point, the drums and the melody slow, but the distortion grows into the sound of slow-motion wreckage, a cacophony of corrosion and collapse. The drums keep the beat going in the midst of this grinding maelstrom, and a high-pitched, two-note tone starts going off, like a warning siren. Eventually the drums begin to sound like a tribal ritual under the blizzard of harsh, grinding, tearing sounds of guitar torture.

Later still, the driving beat changes to bursts of percussion and then the drums stop, clearing the way for a wall of feedback and then a horrifying, howling, four-note guitar motif. The drums return in a slow and methodical fashion, anchoring yet another grim, looping melody within the hailstorm of harsh noise. A sound like an infernal trumpet appears, as well as a piercing guitar sound that resembles the wailing of an angry wraith.

As a looping melody persists inside the hurricane, the drums lock into an almost tribal progression, and the piercing wail of the guitar returns, warbling like a slow emergency siren that’s just achieved sentience and knows hunger.

https://seaofbones.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Sea-of-Bones-35253450819/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haxenzijrkell-Des Lasters Der Zauberey

HÄXENZIJRKELL

Häxenzijrkell are a German black metal band whose debut, two-song EP Des Lasters Der Zauberey was released digitally and on EP by Amor Fati Productions on April 30.

As noted earlier, both songs are long ones, both in the 11-minute range. The gloomy, mid-paced title track is abrasive and murky, dissonant and disturbing, with only the methodical ritualistic beat of the drums and a bleak repeating riff to hold onto as the vocalist shrieks and yells his torment. It’s a blending of hypnosis and psychosis, a poisonous haze within which lurks seething guitar excretions and discomforting feedback. Someone rapidly declaims in German; someone else cries out in a wordless ghostly chorus; the poison soaks your head; it ends in cackling.

After a vocal sample at the start, “Canon Episcopi” seems to cut through some inter-dimensional membrane and pull you into a realm of eerie droning sounds and low wails, pierced by grim vibrating riffs, the crack and crash of drums, and unhinged demonic howls. The sound has an ear-mangling, lo-fi quality, but the repeating, thorny, central riff in this track may manage to infiltrate your mind against your better judgment, as it did me. This is pestilential, desolate, doomed, and haunted music from the land of the dead.

https://amorfatiproductions.bandcamp.com/album/des-lasters-der-zauberey

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hvosch-Thornsmoat

HVØSCH

Hvøsch are from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and their new album (released in January) is named Thornsmoat.

The band describe their music as “anti-utopian”, and this new release is based on an allegory of a black fox harried to its death by a hunter and his hounds, exploring not only the cruelty of humans toward animals but also the harrowing cruelty that “the cult of the righteous” inflict on some who don’t embrace their religious dogmas.

The tale is musically arranged into two chapters. Those two songs on the album are also long ones, ranging from more than 13 minutes to nearly 16.

Against the deep, slow tumble of the drums, echoing guitar and bass notes cast a dark spell in “tetiva (chapter I)”, a spell that is drawn into deeper midnight shades when huge chords and a radioactive background haze enter the frame. Percussive plucking and a head-nodding beat segment the flow, and harsh vocal howls emerge in tandem with a clanging, brooding melody. Eventually, hell breaks loose in a flurry of thundering drums and typhoon riffing, a melancholy melody surfing through the storm surge before the pace slows and Hvøsch re-enter the doom-drenched, post-metal territory where they began — followed by one last surge of intensity

The second song, “kapkan (chapter II”) quickly changes gears, delivering a flurry of threshing riffs over the methodical thump of the bass and drums — which soon become frenzied themselves. An urgent, plaintive, anguished melody swells slowly through the tumult. Eventually, Hvøsch revisit the other half of their sound, in a slow, craggy, stagger, lightened only by shining guitar chords. The music moves smoothly and effectively between these segments of spellbinding grief and torrential urgency, the dynamism holding the interest to the end of this haunting, tragic, but often beautiful tale.

Hvøsch are now looking for labels who might be interested in releasing this new album.

https://hvosch.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/hvoschband

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shyy-Demo 2016

SHYY

Shyy are based in São Paulo, Brazil, with members who are also participants in the doom metal band Abske Fides, whom I’ve written about before (here). Shyy released an initial instrumental demo in 2008 and then contributed two more songs to a Pest Productions compilation in 2009. They followed that with three tracks for a split in 2012, and in the middle of the current month, with an altered line-up, they released a two-song demo as a precursor to a forthcoming full-length that they hope to release in the latter half of this year.

The two songs, “Desfalecer (Faint)” and “Afogar-se (Drown)”, are both sung in Portuguese. In genre terms, you could consider them a form of depressive, post-black metal. “Desfalecer” moves between passages of dark, driving black metal intensity and melancholy rock ‘n’ roll, with a beautiful instrumental in the middle that conveys longing and loss. The vocals are a tandem of wrenching, blood-spraying shrieks and sombre clean vocals. “Afogar-se” follows a similar format, but with an almost anthemic crescendo at the end.  As tormented and grief-stricken as the music is, it’s just as effective as the first track at getting its hooks in you.

https://shyybr.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/shyybr

  15 Responses to “SHADES OF BLACK: SEA OF BONES, HÄXENZIJRKELL, HVØSCH, SHYY”

  1. Hvøsch is particularly hypnotic. And here is a fun fact: Ø is pronounced as i in bird or u in burned. Talk about inconsistent alphabet.

    • SO how do you know which pronunciation to give it when speaking?

      • The pneumonic I’ve tended to use is that the slash just kills any forceful presence the vowel could have had in the word, so I almost just read or pronounce the word as if nothing was there. For example, “MØRK” would be said like “mrk”, so that it almost comes off as a soft e, but with a hint of a u sound to convey just how desolate and empty that vowel spot is.

        • Now I’m getting confused. Gorger made it sound like the Turkish ö (kind of like urr, but your lips will look more like you’re making an O. Are you saying it’s like that, but without almost the beginning of the “r” sound to round it out?

      • Considering they are Russians, hell knows, but to give you an idea about the Ø-thing, here’s a short story where all the Ø sounding letters have been replaced by its trve symbolic representative.
        “SørgicalBrute, that lørking pørvørt, mørdered a børd to make a feather based før for his gørl (who was a nørse) on May først. Sørely he lørned that it was øgly, so he børned it”. (Now ugly don’t have a distinct ø-sound, but what the hell.)
        Now you probably wish you had this wonderful letter too.
        In the next lesson we shall have a look at the Nordic letters Æ and Å, before we move on to Icelandic and Polish letters like Þ, Ð, Ą and Ł, cause þorn ain’t what you think it is.
        Than we precede to Greek and Russian letters, before rounding of with the more than 100.000 Chinese and Japanese characters.
        Stay tuned.

        • I’m breathless with anticipation. Perhaps we could also have a small tutorial on what contortions of the mouth are necessary to pronounce Häxenzijrkell?

          • the “ä” is pronounced like an “e”, if it’s supposed to be in German (which this seems like a sort of distorted form of German, or perhaps an idiosyncratic spelling of Haxenzirkell, which would mean “Witch Circle” directly, or “Coven”. the umlaut in general acts like putting an “e” behind the vowel, and makes it so that you move your mouth into the position you would make when saying the letter “e”, but then try to say whatever vowel is under the umlaut instead of the “e” your mouth looks and feels ready to produce. The transition from “a” to “ä” is pretty easy to render for an English tongue, but the difference between “o” and “u” and their umlaut-ed cousins becomes more technical and harder for an English tongue to render.

            • Actually “Haxe” is leg (or shank), as in “Lambshaxe” (=lamb shank) and is only used in the context of eating animals, while Hexe is witch. I think what they are doing is creating words that phonetically are pronounced like regular German but with spelling that is supposed to be reminiscent of medieval German (thus “Zauberey” rather than “Zauberei”, i.e. magic).

          • I see you can’t wait. Just like Swedish and German Ö is equivalent to Ø, Ä is just a pussy way of writing Æ, which is pronounced as A in bad or sad. In German, probably with a leaning toward the E of hell. As you can see, the Æ (æ) is a combination of A and E, as if they fornicated and bred a bastard.
            “Hexen” is fine, but the rest is… hell.
            Listen to Germans struggle here and here 😉
            My over-all best tip; cut of your tongue. That’d make a perfect excuse for not even trying to pronounce such drivel.
            Or… less dramatically, pronounce it in English: coven (or witch circle).

        • Since “hvosch” is an actual Russian word, meaning “horsetail weed”, I’m going with the assumption, that they pronounce it just as “o”, and the letter itself is decorative, like a heavy metal umlaut.

          The word “hvosch” has some intrinsic appeal to anyone who speaks Russian, as it has a pleasantly folksy ring to it – as it deals with vegetation, has a typically Slavic sibilant sound in it, and is just one syllable long, looking pretty nice when you write it down in Cyrillics: ХВОЩ .

  2. I should also mention that Shyy and the aforementioned Hvøsch are sounding mighty fine.

    • Agreed; all of these bands/albums/songs were fantastic, but Hvøsch and Shyy are really taking the cake for me

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