Sometimes we know an encyclopedia’s worth of information about a metal band, especially those who’ve been around for decades and play to packed arenas. Other times we have almost nothing other than the music. This is one of those times.
All we know about Cloven is that they’re from somewhere in Canada and that sometime in the future, most likely next year, they will release an album named Chance Encounter of Flesh and Nail. We’ve also been told that the song from the album we’re premiering today was a decade in the making. But that’s all we know.
Nosy people that we are, we’re left curious, but even when we know a lot about who is in a band, where they’re located, what inspired them, etc., etc., it’s still the music that must carry the day, and “Astonishment of Heart” does that.
The song dwells in mystic darkness, and reveals itself slowly. Plaintive piano keys ring slowly at a distance and come closer. Shrill radiations warble like birds and magnify into tones more wondrous. Drums slowly boom, ethereal mists rise, and a voice mutters in ragged gasps.
It’s a haunting and unearthly experience, but becomes more turbulent and unsettling, the drums beginning to go off like cannons, the surrounding sounds starting to swell and sear, both submersive and subversive, the voice splintering in screams.
Still frightful, the intensity briefly ebbs, as operatic choral voices wail in grief and we hear lycanthropic gasps again. But again the music swells: The giant percussive booms reverberate, the synths and guitar expand, glittering like stars, wailing and warbling, and beginning to blind. It all ends too soon.
This is one of those very dark songs that leaves the spine tingling and a chill on the skin, a hallucinatory amalgam of madness and wonder, of haunting elegance and wrenching hopelessness. In the accompanying video, these words appear first:
THE LORD SHALL SMITE THEE WITH MADNESS
AND WITH BLINDNESS
AND WITH ASTONISHMENT OF HEART
We do know one more thing: The artwork for this single was done by Unexpected Specter. Maybe we’ll all learn something more by following Cloven via the links below.
CLOVEN:
https://www.instagram.com/cloven137
https://www.facebook.com/Cloven137