AN NCS SPLIT PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BELLICISTE AND ÚIR

(written by Islander)

This coming Friday (August 1st) two excellent black metal bands, Belliciste and Úir, will release an album-length split on cassette tape (and digitally). It includes four songs from Belliciste, three from Úir, and one song that is a collaboration between the two bands. Today we’re very happy to share a full stream of all the songs.

Further commentary is likely unnecessary, but of course you’re going to get it anyway. This is an hour-long compendium of music, and because most days for most people are hurried and harried, explaining why it would be worthwhile to pause for this, from its beginning to its end, may be useful. Beyond that, the commentary functions as an expression of thanks to these musicians for enriching our hurried and harried days with something this superb.

 

BELLICISTE

Active since 2010, Belliciste has principally been the work of K.G. (aka Krigeist). Metal-Archives identifies his country of origin as New Zealand and traces subsequent movement to Scotland (which probably explains the connection to Úir), Slovakia, and now Serbia. The Belliciste discography includes two albums, a pair of demos, a pair of EPs, and a pair of splits (the forthcoming one with Úir will make three).

For the new songs on the split, K.G. performed bass, guitar, and vocals. The drumming for them was written and performed by H.M. from Úir (not the first time he has worked with Belliciste). K.G. has explained this about some of the inspiration for the new songs:

The Belliciste side is a slight departure from the usual thematics I deal with. This time focussing on the adversarial entities in Māori mythology and on Tītokowaru’s war – one of the last struggles against colonial forces in Aotearoa. In both cases, a violent reaction against the arrogant imposition of “order”, both cosmic and mundane.

Those are angry words, and Belliciste‘s music on the split also rages, but it also sounds stricken by grief. At full throttle, the drums and bass often sound like rolling thunder or avalanche boulders coming down or the rapid crack of gunshots; the dense riffing flows in great engulfing waves but also turbulently roils. The vocals are cutting and caustic, gritty and fierce, sometimes near-strangled in their vehement intensity, sometimes wild in their wild-eyed yells.

The songs are dynamic affairs. They do channel grief, even at full speed, but they get feral and “stripped down” too, shifting into highly headbangable expressions of visceral anger and warlike antagonism, and the music also spins into expressions of fierce jubilation. The riffing vibrantly whirs but also slashes. The drums batter but also rock out.

“Tupu-ranga-o-te-pō” is probably the most emotionally stricken of the Belliciste songs, but also maybe the most breathtaking display of the music’s dynamism. It staggers like a funeral march and drenches the senses in melodies that groan and wail. But its intensity gradually swells, eventually bringing forth an attention-seizing guitar melody that sounds both beseeching and ancient, almost like the skirl of Highland pipes. And further along the music erupts in fire and fury, still pierced by the trilling lead guitar, but ends with a mournful acoustic melody.

“Karakia Kikokiko” also includes melancholy acoustic-guitar melodies, as well as episodes of tempestuous assaults, tragic grandeur, and haunting mysticism (in which solemn choral voices appear and lead the song to its conclusion)

All four of the songs channel tremendous emotional power; all four are quite memorable.

 

ÙIR

For now, I’m going to jump past the collaborative track, which comes next in the running order, and turn instead to Úir‘s three songs on the split — leaving the collaboration to the end of all these words.

By way of background for newcomers, this band was formed in Edinburgh, Scotland during 2015 among Scottish and Cumbrian musicians (including members of Haar and Úlfarr). They explain that “a raw, natural, atmospheric sound has materialised over the ensuing period which draws inspiration from the wild places of Britain and various musical influences”. They explain their goal as “bringing a voice from the remote ends of the Celtic world and from the depths of a forgotten past”. This split will be their third release overall, following EPs in 2016 and 2019.

Úir‘s three songs are long ones, especially the final two in their running order. Given the participation of drummer H.M. on both sides of the split, there is a commonality between the two. Like Belliciste‘s songs, Úir‘s thrive on that powerful and vibrantly dynamic propulsion, which is sometimes primitive and sometimes blistering or acrobatic, and they’re also damned heavy.

The union of these two bands makes sense for other reasons as well. Úir‘s riffing is also oceanic in its power and vast scope, maybe even more so than Bellicaste‘s. It often creates an engulfing embrace — and a daunting one, because the emotional intensity of Úir‘s songs is also tremendous, and they often express feelings of suffering and despair, vast soundscapes of loss rendered in fire.

Úir reach the most terrible depths of anguish when they slow down and when the music becomes less expansive. The chords slash and clang, ripple and ring, as the drums tumble and rumble like boulders, and the guitars bespeak grief in striking terms. Úir are very adept in using this push and pull of intensity, these shifts from exhilarating zeniths to crushing troughs, to keep an iron grip on a listener’s attention.

They keep attention in other ways too. The vocals are harrowing in the intensity of their torment and rage, a mix of cutting snarls and unhinged cries that seem completely cut loose from any restraints of self-preservation. The bass lines are pleasingly prominent, and as variable and nimble as the lights-out drumming. And Úir sometimes bring in glinting or glittering notes and ethereally vaporous tones to create mysterious and mystical auras, even though the rhythm section may still be rattling heads and busting bones.

In these ways and others not mentioned, Úir make it so that no one will be counting the minutes, even as they mount up in those two longest songs, “Caoineag” and “An Ceann Mallaithe“. In constantly evolving and frequently elaborate but always passionate ways, they carry us far away from the mundane, even if where they take us is to dark, sometimes devastated, and often haunting places.

ÚIR is:
H.M. – Drums & Additional Vocals
L.M. – Guitar & Vocals
S.S. – Bass
S.A. – Additional Guitar & Additional Vocals
G.M. – Additional Guitar

 

BELLICISTE / ÚIR

Now we go back to the collaborative track. The song’s name is “Of the Fire“. It functions as something of a bridge between the Belliciste side and the Úir side. It features H.M. on drums, K.G. on guitars, and Úir members L.A. and S.S. on vocals and bass, respectively.

The song is well-named. It explodes like a lightning strike igniting wild woods and the flames whipped by gale-force winds. The riffing burns and blazes; the drums blast with high-octane fuel; the screaming vocals are unchained. But of course, given the proclivities of both bands, the song is a dynamic one, both in its pacing and in the mood of the riffing.

On this split, ferocity is as close as either of the bands come to joy, and that’s true of the collaborative track as well. The fire here sounds desperate as well as destructive, and the song also descends into deeper and darker crevasses of pain as the pace slows and the guitarists augment tremolo’d whirs with slashing strums and rippling leads.

All in all, this is a terrific split, bursting with passion but beautifully written and beautifully executed. At last (you never thought this guy would shut up, did you?), we’re very happy to present its full streaming premiere:

The Belliciste/Úir split will be released physically on grey recycled plastic cassette tapes, and as a digital download. The cover painting, titled “A Sorceress in a Wood Surrounded by Devils,” is the work of Dutch artist Jan Janz van Buesem dating to the first half of the 1600s.

ACQUIRE:
https://uir-fraech.bandcamp.com/album/belliciste-ir

ÚIR:
https://uir-fraech.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Uirfraech

BELLICISTE:
https://belliciste.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/belliciste
https://www.instagram.com/belliciste.bm/