SHADES OF BLACK: A DEAD POEM, THE SUN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT, IRGA, GLYPH

(written by Islander)

Today’s blackening of the sabbath will be shorter than usual. After finishing yesterday’s Seen and Heard column I did chores, then conversed for hours with a visitor to our home (a good friend from across the water in Seattle), then spent the late afternoon and evening watching a great baseball game at the local sports bar, then slept for 9 1/2 hours. And now I’ve got to leave home soon for another activity with friends.

So there’s the excuses. I know you didn’t need them. A shrink would make good money trying to diagnose why I feel the need to make them, and more money trying to figure out why I feel equally compelled to do these columns instead of fucking off like a normal un-churched person on Sunday mornings. Enjoy!

 

A DEAD POEM (Brazil)

We begin with wolves, with a song named “Lykos“, whose lyrical and musical themes the band describe as follows:

The wolf here transcends its wild nature, becoming an archetype of independence, inner strength and the search for one’s own truth beyond established convictions. The song explores the duality of the beast and the individual, the connection with primordial instincts and the celebration of the will as a driving force, a hymn to individual freedom and the power of self-awareness, wrapped in a dark and evocative sound.

The song itself is a wild one, and unconventional in its blend of sounds. It incorporates slugging beats and eerie sonic shimmers, gasping and rasping vocals and vividly darting notes that shine, jolting bass-pulses and shrill, squirming arpeggios.

Percussive blasting eventually ensues, along with rapidly writhing riffage, ethereally pinging electro-keys, and a slithering solo that sounds mysterious and menacing. I found it all very cool.

https://adeadpoem.bandcamp.com/track/lykos
https://www.facebook.com/adeadpoem.doom

 

THE SUN’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT (UK)

Next up is “Blue Fawn“, one of three songs on this UK band’s forthcoming Demo III (now the solo work of No One).

Like a pale hand beckoning in a starless night the song gently and mysteriously leads the listener forward, only to explode the ghostly spell in a storm of cauterizing screams, furious drumming, blizzard-like riffing, and magma-strength bass lines.

The drums eventually steady, shimmering keys arise, and ardent singing soars, further expanding an already-expansive scope but also drawing the music into more bereft terrain. To mix the metaphors, the music flows like powerful submerging waves but it also subsides, allowing brilliant swirls of crystalline sound to take over.

Those sensations create breathtaking visions of unearthly splendor, even as the vocals continue raging in their torment — although the stratospheric fascinations don’t blind us to the music’s core feelings of sorrow. The rhythm section deserve a round of applause too as they maintain the music’s viscerally propulsive kick throughout the changes in tempo and mood.

Demo III will be released by Church Road Records on May 9th.

P.S. If you want to delve further into this band’s past music, we can be your guide, because we’ve written about them on three previous occasions over the last three years, with the writings collected here.

https://thesunsjourneythroughthenight.bandcamp.com/album/demo-iii
https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Suns-Journey-Through-The-Night/61553446097365/

 

IRGA (Russia)

Now we return to wolves, or rather a half-wolf. Here is how Irga introduce their new single “Stepson of the Forest“:

The Black Forest knows about pain, the Black Forest feeds on fear and anger, the Black Forest gives strength to those who suffer, but always takes something in return. And the Black Forest sheltered Yavul, who hid in its shadow after the destruction of his native village. Years passed, and the boy’s appearance was no longer human, his teeth learned to gnaw carrion, his feet became rough, and his fathers’ tongue was replaced by a growl. But this exhausted half-wolf remembered the anger, and remembered the one who made him like this.

In this song the riffing snarls and swarms but also bursts open and shoots spears of flame. The vocals veer from beastly gutturals to rabid howls, and the drumming constantly shifts too. The fretwork creates feverish mayhem but also slowly and sorrowfully rings, always backed by gut punching bass-grooves and sometimes augmented with ethereal synths (or something that sounds like them).

In the song’s mid-section, slowly meandering strings and slowly picked acoustics create a sad and soulful interlude, but after that the music towers in power and races again, and the vocals again capture the extremity of half-wolf, half-man, the sounds of ruin and rage. The surround-sound sensations in the song’s final minutes are elaborate and artfully interlocked, and they become simpler and softer again at the end.

“Stepson of the Forest” was digitally released last month as a single by the Saint Petersburg label Svanrenne Music. It will be included in Irga‘s album Black Pine Needles that the same label will release on June 21st.

Irga, by the way, appears to be the name taken by the project’s principal creator Pyotr Podkolzin. He was joined on this song by vocalist Ovfrost (Malist, Crimson Crown) and drummer Vladimir Udarnov.

https://svanrenne.bandcamp.com/album/stepson-of-the-forest
https://www.facebook.com/svanrennemusic/

 

GLYPH (U.S.)

Last summer we had the pleasure of premiering the most recent album by the mysterious U.S. black metal project Glyph. Its title was odes of wailing, hymns of mourning. I spilled a lot or words trying to capture the music, including these:

In grand and elaborate fashion, the music rages and storms, conjures chilling otherworldly vistas, and portrays emotional downfall on a planetary scale. Even with the warmth of the bass and head-hooking back-beats in the mix, there’s no escaping the feeling of inner and outer catastrophe that pervades almost all of this album.

But as relentlessly daunting and dire as the music is, we venture to guess that you won’t want to escape it. It’s more likely that you’ll forget to breathe, even as your mouth hangs open.

Glyph followed that most recent album with a three-song demo last fall entitled Or as I Prefer to Say, “Who​?​“, and just a couple of days ago Glyph released an album-length compilation named Starve. This new release includes the three songs from that preceding demo, as well as other songs previously released as singles in 2023 and 2024, and they’re all worth having in one place. However, the first two tracks are surfacing now for the first time.

The opener and title track, “Starve“, is described as a cover of a Rollins Band song that Glyph originally recorded for a Free Palestine compilation that never came out. The second one, “Somnambulism“, was also previously unreleased.

Glyph‘s rendition of “Starve” is a head-spinning rager, a coruscating amalgam of unhinged screams, riotous drumming, frantic bass pulses, and guitars (and keys?) that brazenly blaze and brilliantly sparkle. The shrill tonalities of the song are brain-piercing and they create an engulfing embrace, one that becomes more disturbing as the music gradually grows both more psychedelic and more psychotic. Even the vivid throb-and-heave of the bass begins to seem demented, and of course there’s hardly anything discernibly sane about the vocals.

“Somnambulism” also features viscerally gripping drum-and-bass work, but true to its name it’s like a waking dream from the beginning, a very haunting and harrowing dream. Again, the dominant sounds in the song are fleet-fingered, piercing in their clarity, elaborate in their confection, and somehow mesmerizing despite the freaked-out wildness of the experience. (The bass also does far more than keep the groove going, standing out with a nimble solo just past the halfway point.)

Insanity reigns again in the vocals. They’re as raw and ruinous as the music is intricate and dazzling. And hell yes, it’s dazzling. Before you realize it, the song transforms into a head-spinning spectacle, every dexterous instrumental performance flying fast and high.

Glyph has pledged all proceeds to a charitable cause:

“In light of the Trump regime threatening to eliminate funding for LGBTQ suicide prevention hotlines, all proceeds from the digital album sales will be donated to The Trevor Project. www.thetrevorproject.org”

https://keeperoftheglyph.bandcamp.com/album/starve