In the long hours of night when the daylight will not come, when the ghosts of the past and the devils of the present toy with your sanity and dissect your sense of self and self respect… when the first razor cut, made with trembling hand, sends a shocking stream of crimson crawling sluggishly across the sickly pale white of your sun-starved skin… when there is no comfort to be found and you are lost in a shadowed labyrinth of torment and grief, sinking in a morass of blood and tears… on a night like this there is no salvation in the bottle or the needle. There is no god in heaven and no fallen angel in hell. There is only the emptiness that cannot be filled and the unbearable loneliness that gnaws at your soul. And the unshakeable certainty that there is no way out.
As album preambles go, that one is a particularly soul-shuddering thing to read. It is also an entirely fitting encapsulation of Raw Illumination, an album released last fall by Finland’s Grave With A View — not only the album’s bleak emotional inspiration but also the wretchedness, ruin, and rage of the musical experience itself.
The Dusktone label, which released the album, offered their own preview:
Hailing from Kerava, Finland, Grave With A View crafts a sonic assault of suffocating mid-tempo Black Metal oppression with faster bursts of chaotic intensity, in the vein of the mid 2000’s Swedish BM scene, á la Shining, Naglfar and Grá. This aural violence mirrors the raw depth of the lyrical content at the heart of their work: an abysmal, filth ridden descent into personal introspection of addiction, nihilism, degradation, endless forms of self-destruction, and the ever-present specters of Violence and Death — the two great equalizers of above all.
These blocks of text are here as a reminder of, or an introduction to, an album that truly does run listeners through a gauntlet of violence, degradation, and despair. But we also have a more immediate and tangible reminder of, or introduction to, Raw Illumination through the video we’re about to premiere for the album track “The Lash“. We have some words from the band about this specific song too:
Submission. Torture. Pleasure. Death
Within the intersection of those themes lies the concept of “The Lash“. We are looking in as outsiders on the thoughts of someone who embodies, lusts and fetishizes on or about the perfect harmony of the above mentioned elements. Who yearns for and then takes on a willing partner or lover, if you will, as we descend further and further down the steps of depravity during the song.
The abrasive and oppressive nature of the instrumentation of “The Lash” is a perfect aural companion to explore that relationship.
And now, at last, the music and the video — for those hardy souls who haven’t been scared off or turned off by what you’ve just read. Well, almost at last, because we have a few preamble words of our own (of course).
We should quickly say that you don’t have to share this band’s nihilistic world-view or their interest in capturing the destructive depravity to which it might lead willing partners in order to be captivated and consumed by “The Lash“. It’s only necessary that you appreciate devouring hell-storms of scathing riffage, furious blast-beat propulsion, and maddened blood-spray screams, i.e., explosive and electrifying black metal.
“The Lash” delivers all that full-throttle, but delivers other things as well: the riffing maniacally roils, writhes, rises, and falls as if in agony; the vocals erupt in enraged roars; and near the song’s mid-point the breathtaking surge breaks, yielding the stage to a lone guitar that rings like chimes made of misery.
That desolate guitar melody carries forward, joined by boulder-like drums and a heavily thrumming bass. Eventually the music begins to boil and batter again, once more creating sensations of severe distress (but with a wailing melody in the mix), and then closes at typhoon strength.
As for the video, it does include flashes of disturbing imagery in line with the song’s thematic conception, but mainly it captures the band’s performance, which makes an electrifying song even more electric.
GRAVE WITH A VIEW Line-up:
J.O – Guitar/Vocals
O.H.R – Guitars/Bass/Noise
Drums on Raw Illumination by M.K.
Additional vocals on Raw Illumination by A.L. and T.N.
The album is available from Dusktone and the band on multiple formats — variant vinyl LP editions, CD, cassette tape, and digital. Find more info via the links below:
DUSKTONE:
https://www.dusktone.org/label/dusktone/
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/raw-illumination
GRAVE WITH A VIEW:
https://gravewithaview.bandcamp.com/album/raw-illumination
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6V6RQ0YfmDrbHpwdkgtZkj
https://www.facebook.com/gravewithaview/
https://www.instagram.com/gwavblackmetal/
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