AN NCS PREMIERE: AUROCH — “SAY NOTHING”

 

On October 21, Profound Lore will release the third album by Vancouver’s Auroch, which is named Mute Books. The album will be released in different formats, with each of them featuring differing artwork by Cold Poison connected to the different aspects of the album. On one of them, these words are visible: “Silentium est aureum” — the Latin source of the phrase “silence is golden”. And if there is a “title track” to the album, it is probably the one you are about to hear:”Say Nothing“.

These related phrases have meaning yet to be revealed, but the music itself is anything but quiet.

As the album’s title may correctly suggest to you, however, the songs are organized into “chapters”. Because this is music, you could also think of them as movements in an interconnected compositional narrative. The title of the first chapter is “Trefoil Is the Grail of Perdition“. It consists of three songs, all of which are connected to each other thematically and musically. Last month, DECIBEL premiered the second song in this first movement of the album, a track named “He Wreathes the Cross“, and “Say Nothing” is the third of those.

 

Photo by Max Montessi

 

Matching the violence of its lyrics, “He Wreathes the Cross” is fast, instrumentally intricate, and borderline deranged in its aura — a chaotic, head-spinning piece of black/death mayhem driven by an eye-popping drum performance. Before we turn to the follow-on track “Say Nothing“, here’s what the band’s Shawn Haché (also Mitochondrion) tells us about it:

“A song that represents a bold plunge into strange new territory, while still maintaining a viciously primitive approach. Balancing the unorthodoxy on a solid crux, the primal death metal is flanked by Auroch’s most experimental moments. We are standing on an immutable foundation, while aways moving forward!”

“Say Nothing” is indeed a balance of primal and chaotic death metal savagery and other ingredients that from the beginning generate a dark, mystical aura. While the serpentine, ritualistic opening section is both unsettling and hypnotic, what follows is a cyclone of fleet, ferocious, maniacal instrumentation and widely divergent vocal expressions. All three of the musicians in this power trio rush ahead at a blinding pace, but they’re flying a wholly unpredictable, rapidly veering, and mind-bendingly intricate course. It’s a dissonant, discordant, delirious explosion of sound.

When the song re-connects at the end with the otherworldly way it began, and a woman’s voice has concluded her solemnly intoned proclamations, the first thing you may well do (after wondering “what did I just hear?!?”) is go back to the beginning and take this astonishing trip again, in an effort to pay closer attention to what you missed.

 

 

Mute Books was recorded at Raincity Recorders (Baptists, Japandroids, White Lung), and it was mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk (Prurient, Inquisition, Pissgrave, Black Twilight Circle, Power Trip). The full track list of the album is as follows:

TREFOIL IS THE GRAIL OF PERDITION
1. Billowing Vervain
2. He Wreaths The Cross
3. Say Nothing

A MOST EXCELLENT SPELL FOR TRANSMUTATION
FROM THE TEACHINGS OF THE CURRENT 137
4. Tipharethagirion

PASSAGES TO TOPHET
5. The Keeping
6. Her Bidding
7. Cup Of Hemlock

 

 

Profound Lore Records will release Mute Books on CD, LP, cassette, and as a digital download on October 21st; pre-orders will begin soon. The vinyl edition of the album will include a booklet that is itself presented like a book with a narrative.

Below we’re including not only “Say Nothing” but also a stream of the song that precedes it on the album, “He Who Wreathes the Cross“.

http://www.auroch1.bandcamp.com
http://www.facebook.com/aurochmetal

http://www.profoundlorerecords.com
http://www.facebook.com/profoundlorerecords
http://www.profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com