SHADES OF BLACK: ABYSSLOOKER, ASPHALT GRIEVING, THEY CAME FROM VISIONS, TWILIGHT SUN

I have a lot to get to for this Sunday column as I continue to benefit from my day job at least temporarily leaving me alone. I hope it will be a benefit to you too. I’ll try to make this a bit easier to get through by calling out tracks to sample from the three full releases I’ve included.

ABYSSLOOKER (Russia)

I made a point of including music from a Ukrainian band in yesterday’s roundup, yesterday being the second anniversary of the egomaniacal thug Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I wanted to make a point of including a Russian band today, the point being that sometimes blame can be painted with too broad a brush, and we ought not do that.

Abysslooker‘s new single is named “Eternal” because it is a tale of a journey through endless reaches, “the story of a doomed crew led by a mad captain, rushing towards the inevitable through cold, lifeless space”, though the lyrics suggest that their downward spiral of madness may itself be endless.

The song does have an end, but doesn’t reach it quickly. Through a blending of post-metal and black-metal it leads onward with crushing weight, dismal siren calls, and vocals of wretched derangement, intertwined with bursts of percussive aggression, scathing fretwork storms, and vocals that are even more frighteningly taking leave of their senses.

Those dire siren sounds, slowly ringing in agony, link the initial stages of the journey together, stages that eventually include meandering reverberations and throbbing bass tones, coupled with wailing and wrenching vocals; nova-like explosions of battering and brilliant sound underlaid by depth-charge bass tones that will vibrate your bones; and acoustic strumming and the quaver of extravagant theatrical singing that earns its spotlight.

“Eternal” really does feel like a journey of the mad through a cosmos of hungry voids and blinding wonders, with no way back, no way to stop, and no peace to be found.

This is the first but not the last entry in today’s column which I owe to a recommendation from Rennie Resmini (starkweather). I led with it because I’m following alphabetical order, even knowing that it’s unfair to put any band in the position of having to follow something so stunning. Coincidentally, that turned out not to be such a problem after all.

https://abysslooker.bandcamp.com/track/eternal
https://www.facebook.com/abysslookerband
https://www.instagram.com/abysslookerband/

 

 

ASPHALT GRIEVING (Chile)

I did just say that today’s collection would include other recommendations from Rennie, and right away here’s another one, a 25-minute debut EP with stunning cover art that proves to be a dazzling and daunting trip through changing dimensions of fear. I’ll attempt to explain what I mean, but first here’s what Rennie wrote about it (here):

Chilean upstarts Asphalt Grieving with a punked up black death rip ride. Vocals infused with Sakevi Yokoyama feral intensity which push this into a mandatory purchase. The other interesting thing at play is a thread of meandering atmospheric background texture lending ethereal or cosmic vibes to the rough and ready rugged riffing and battering ram speeds. When things slow down Asphalt Grieving have the quasi-melodic quality that fellow countrymen Animus Mortis has.

To return to my own thoughts, but also borrowing from Rennie‘s, the music on Lack of Certainty is indeed feral, ripping, and ravaging but also frightening in its feelings of everything going berserk and falling apart in lacerated tatters. Even when the music softly glitters, it raises goosebumps on the flesh.

The blizzard-like riffing is wholly immersive and subversive, and often ultra-violent, yet still manages to channel emotionally charged melodic accents, many of them dissonant and disconcerting — moods of madness to be sure, but also whirlwinds of pain that then subside, revealing the sinkholes of agony they’ve opened.

Pay attention to the maneuvers of the rhythm section. The attention will be rewarded, even though sometimes it’s difficult to focus on their changes because the guitars are so piercing, so dense and multi-layered yet so dazzling in their constantly mutating sounds. And the vocals… well holy shit, the vocals are extraordinary, holding nothing back, and completely losing hold of any slippery rails of sanity that might once have been within reach.

One last accolade: The trip through the EP is a dynamic experience. Asphalt Grieving are very adept at pulling as well as pushing their music’s intensity, even if they never leave a listener feeling very comfortable, in part because the shifts occur without warning. They constantly put us on the edge of a precipice (or at least the edge of our seats), trying to hold onto something, anything, and at least in my case it left me wide-eyed and gasping.

I did promise to recommend one song as a sampler for the impatient among you, and here it’s “Embracing Space“.

https://asphaltgrieving.bandcamp.com/album/lack-of-certainty
https://blacklegionrecs.bandcamp.com/album/lack-of-certainty-2

 

 

THEY CAME FROM VISIONS (Ukraine)

Still mindful of yesterday’s terrible anniversary, I decided to include the music of a Ukrainian band for the second day in a row, this one a trio who conceal themselves in masks and robes that would seem monastic if they weren’t so white, cinched with rope at the waist.

Their new album, The Twilight Robes, was just released two days ago by Eisenwald. It’s their second full-length, but not having heard the first one I can’t offer any sketches about whether or how their music has moved in the last four years. I’ve barely started to get my head around what they’ve offered us now.

Eisenwald promises “folk-horror-inspired black metal”. The “folk” quality turns out to refer to more than whatever scary old tales might have furnished inspiration. It also connects with the instrumentation and melodies through which the band call up the past, a connection that becomes evident right away through the voice-less introductory track.

Even when the band bring out the black metal armaments in the first full song “Equinox Ablaze“, drums hammering and vocals cackling, the piercing trill of the guitars still carries folk influences. In that song, the past comes even more fully alive again, with balalaika-like strumming and harmonious singing that sounds both sad and inspired.

It’s not the only thing sad about the song. The notes also softly wail like the grief of ravaged survivors, and even when the drums race again and the guitars transform into dervishes, there’s as much distress as resilience in the experience.

Where and how does the horror come in? Listen to “Burning Eyes, Blackened Claws” and you’ll have one answer. The piercing trill of the guitars sounds like frantic flight from something terrible riding the swift wind at your back, which screams its hunger as the bass hammers like your heart.

But melodies of deep melancholy emerge too, as they routinely do in all the songs. Maybe you’ve managed to elude the unearthly beasts and found a ruined cabin where you hide, but knowing too well that your escape will be short-lived.

That same song is actually the one I’d recommend as a taste test, but you wouldn’t go wrong with any of the tracks that follow it. They all have the capacity to transport listeners to a different place and a different time, or more accurately a place and time that may have only existed in haunted imaginations.

P.S. Subsequent to my writing the review above, the band released a video for “The Blissful Defeat“, and I’ve added it below. Well worth your time.

https://theycamefromvisions.bandcamp.com/album/the-twilight-robes
https://www.facebook.com/theycamefromvisions

 

 

TWILIGHT SUN (Germany)

I think most people know that some black metal bands can be very heavy indeed. Gone are the old days when the bass was an afterthought, the kick-drum submerged, and the guitars only whined high, like barbed wire in a whirlwind. If we needed any reminding of that, we get the reminder in the very sinister opening moments of “The Entrance / As the Nameless caress the Sun“, the first song from Twilight Sun‘s debut EP Stigmata Children, which was released last Friday by House of Inkantation.

In addition to the prominence of cavernous bass tones and the gut-punch of the drums, the song also includes ravenous belly-deep growls that bring the beast to your throat. But the song has other facets — the blazing sheen of keys shimmering overhead; riffing that frantically skitters, imperiously brays, and twists like a serpent eating its tail; drums that spit bullets; and soloing that sounds like a black-magic incantation which spirals to a delirious culmination.

If there’s an overarching aura to that song, it’s an infernal one — the fiendishly sinister atmosphere never evaporates. It’s prominently present in the next three songs too, as are the other ingredients mentioned above, including the ghostly but grand eeriness of the keys, plus moments when those growls elevate into snarls and screams, sometimes accompanied by the screams of women or female spoken words, or descend further into chilling pronouncements.

Another quality that doesn’t vanish is the hook-laden nature of the riffing. Sometimes primitive or primeval, sometimes thrusting and lusting, sometimes lashing and thrashing, sometimes heated to a boil, the riffs are always barbed. And the soloing, which both wails and flickers like a bonfire, continues to add significantly to the music’s supernatural atmosphere.

In a nutshell, this is damned good, and even more impressive because Twilight Sun is a solo project. It was mixed and mastered by Markus Stock (Empyrium, The Vision Bleak…), and the lyrics were written by Azathoth (ex-Dark Fortress).

For those in need of an initial taste-test, I would suggest the title song.

https://houseofinkantation.bandcamp.com/album/stigmata-children
https://www.facebook.com/HouseofInkantation/