SHADES OF BLACK: KRIEG, DREAM UNENDING, WORM

Krieg photo by Kassandra Carmona

In a departure from what I usually do for these columns I decided not to string together a bunch of singles from forthcoming records, but instead to write about two albums, one of them a split.

Both of them are already out, so what’s the point of writing about albums you can already hear for yourselves? You might ask that question about almost everything with my name on it, because I almost never scribble review-ish words without including the music streams. Same goes for a lot of the other scribblers around here.

The idea is that the words might induce some people to check out music they weren’t aware of, or decided to pass by. I hope that will happen today. Other motivations: Writing voluntarily can be fun, even when it’s hard. And it’s just good manners to thank someone for making music that resonates in the soul or the muscles or the mush between the ears.

So, with thanks to Krieg, Dream Unending, and Worm, here we go.

 

 

KRIEG (U.S.)

Some bands make history, and so some people keep listening to them out of respect, if nothing else. On the other hand, metalheads are an ornery lot, and when history-making bands step on their cranks, metalheads are quick to say so, and then stop listening.

I think it’s fair to say that Krieg made history as pioneers in the annals of U.S. black metal during its relative infancy, and they haven’t stepped on their cranks. (I’m not expecting to see that quoted in future PR materials and liner notes.)

Krieg aren’t exactly youngsters any more, but although one might expect advancing age among some of the members to have quelled the fires of rebellion, it clearly hasn’t been a salve for bitterness or rage… or sorrow. Krieg‘s new album Ruiner makes that conclusion inescapable.

Nine years on from their last full-length, the new album (according to Neill Jameson) completes a thematic trilogy that began with 2010’s The Isolationist — “a journey of the many faces of the self in various forms of despair and decay leading finally to acceptance.” He also calls it “the authentic personal definition of what KRIEG and black metal stand for in my world.”

I don’t have any inside information, but I don’t think “acceptance” in this context means “resignation”. The vocals on Ruiner are too unhinged and incinerating for that, the riffs too searing, the rhythms too much like rapid-fire bolt guns to the neck. “Acceptance” here seems more like the understanding of “this is how we were born, this is who we still are,” whatever periods of self-criticism, self-doubt, or personal fuck-ups may have intervened along the way.

Well, that probably comes across like armchair psychoanalysis bullshit, but that’s not the intention. It’s more a perception that comes from the lightning storms that flash in the music and the ashes it leaves behind.

And yes, there is as much ash in the music as wildfires, with nothing like the hopefulness of new sprouts emerging from the waste. The album is named Ruiner for a reason. The music often comes in sweeping, overpowering waves of sound, which then descend into troughs of desperation or grief. The piercing melodies that ring and wail through the tumult sometimes seem yearning or wistful, but rarely do they seem hopeful.

Don’t be misled by some of what I’ve said before: The melodies in these songs are as much a source of their visceral appeal as the ferocity of the band’s headlong assaults. They catch in the head, even if what they’re catching are feelings of regret, dashed hopes, and haunting gloom. And while ’90s Scandinavian black metal might be deep in the roots of the music, I don’t think you’ll find anything from that era that sounds quite like “Fragments of Nothing”, “No Gardens Grow Here”, or “The Lantern and the Key” (to pick just three examples).

Also don’t be misled into thinking that the rhythms are nothing but blasting fusillades. The bass shows its muscle in big pulsing grooves, and the drums are just as prone to back-beats or punk beats, and in one particularly moving trough of misery on the album, in “Red Rooms”, the cadence stalks.

Two more things are worth noting about the album: Over and over again, including at the very end, the music becomes chilling, in the way that ghost stories are chilling, channeling feelings of paranormal dread and visitations of wraiths that beckon, even though all your instincts tell you to run from them.

In addition, the music is capable of reaching zeniths of breathtaking splendor (what happens in “Solitarily, A Future Renounced” and the aforementioned “No Gardens Grow Here” are again but two examples), almost classically symphonic in their scale, even if the splendor is heartbreaking or delirious and the vocals ceaselessly wrenching in their intensity.

And so Ruiner is a thoroughly riveting and multi-faceted experience. To return to something I wrote far above, it resonates in the soul and in the muscles, and it spins what’s between the ears off into realms of the imagination far away from the mundane world. It’s very easy to lose yourself in what’s happening here, without a moment’s inclination to find your way out. In short, don’t miss it.

Ruiner is out now on Profound Lore Records.

https://kriegofficial.bandcamp.com/album/ruiner
http://www.facebook.com/officialkrieg

 

 

DREAM UNENDING (Int’l) / WORM (U.S.)

There wasn’t any kind of protracted run-up to the release on Friday of a new split named Starpath by these two bands. It was announced last Monday and then launched by 20 Buck Spin four days later without any preview tracks. We did get an advance copy on Tuesday but I had one of those nasty weeks that prevented my ears from pouncing on it.

Other journo compatriots of mine did pounce, and I saw nothing but compliments from them in a private messaging group. Good news, even if the past works of these bands hadn’t already proved to be so appealing . More compliments will now follow.

This is one of those splits that doesn’t unite the music of two bands from similar sub-genres. Far from it, the two sides present dramatic stylistic contrasts, so much so that only listeners with small-c catholic tastes are likely to relish both of them. If there’s a uniting factor, it’s how tremendously talented all the performers are, and how kaleidoscopic their music is.

Dream Unending contributes only two songs, “So Many Chances” and “If Not Now When”, but they’re very long, and the first of them features the return of guest clean vocalist Phil Swanson, as well as the main tandem of Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore doing their thing in both.

The music in both songs is a rich amalgam of stylistic ingredients and experiences. The ingredients include gunshot drums and pulse-punching bass, monstrous roars and soulful singing, and beautifully gleaming and glittering guitars given to extended prog-rock flourishes (with one foot in the ’70s) that are thoroughly captivating.

The experiences in “So Many Chances” are often dreamlike and bright, leading listeners on both contemplative wanders and exhilarating frolics in spellbinding fashion. On the other hand, “If Not Now When” is more of a crusher, much darker in its moods, with a much more prominent place for DeTore‘s gargantuan roars, and therefore more likely to appeal to die-hard consumers of extreme metal.

Along with bleak moods, however, “If Not Now When” again features mesmerizing guitar instrumentals from realms of prog and jazz, and before it ends it seamlessly maneuvers away from canyons of doom and into the land of dream once more.

 

Worm‘s songs are substantial but not as long as Dream Unending‘s, and so we get three of them instead of two. For these songs guitarist Phil Tougas (of First Fragment, VoidCeremony, Chthe-ilist, and Hulder [live]), in his guise as Wroth Septentrion, is again present as he was on the Bluenothing EP, along with founder Phantom Slaughter (vocals, guitars, synth), bassist Necreon, and drummer L.Dusk.

Not for naught does 20 Buck Spin characterize Worm‘s music as shape-shifting. The dancing and shimmering keys of “Ravenblood”, along with the gargoyle vocals and spectral but spectacular soloing give the song a thoroughly unearthly atmosphere, and the blasting drums, delirious riffing, and even more delirious soloing that comes later, create sensations of violence and glorious ecstasy.

The song is an elaborate, constantly changing, almost theatrical, piece that brings in its own proggy proclivities, as well as psychedelic ones (and some heavy chugging near the end). The entrancing channel-separated dual-guitar harmony near the end is worth the price of admission all by itself.

“Midwinter Tears” is itself elaborate and ever-changing, but more brutish and even more menacing in its moods. The keyboards are again the stuff of midnight cemeteries and haunted houses, and the electrifying wail of the solos is again jaw-dropping, but the gargantuan growls, the ghastly snarls, the massive earth-moving bass lines, and the abysmal melodies create an overarching atmosphere of gothic horror. Before it’s over, the blasting erupts, the vocals go wild, and a final solo spins up into the stratosphere and splits in two.

And finally the split brings “Sea of Sorrow”. Launched by a magnificent organ-and-guitar intro that sends the heart into the throat, this last song is again a musical chameleon, but one that shuns the sunlight, preferring the shine of moon and stars. Its huge, ruthless grooves will get hearts pounding, and the guitar work will keep them in the throat too, but the two-toned vocals are again the stuff of nightmares.

The darting fretwork and rocking beats that arrive with a couple of minutes left really seize attention, dazzling the mind as well as moving the body, and the thrilling reverberations of the song’s finale somehow send the music to an even more glorious elevation. I don’t know the significance of the song’s title, but in my case the music banishes sorrow.

Starpath is out now on 20 Buck Spin.

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/starpath