AN NCS PREMIERE: DEOGEN — “DESOLATION BESTOWED”

(written by Islander)

Just a couple of days ago we premiered a song by the one-person U.S. black metal band Storming off an album to be released on November 14th by Iron Bonehead Productions. We described that extensive track as a “spellbinding excursion” — immersive, ancient-sounding, glittering, haunting, and dangerous. And now we have a song from another U.S. black metal album to be released by the same label on the same day.

This time the band is Deogen, and the album is their second full-length, aptly titled The Graves and Ghosts of Yore. Although Deogen‘s fashioning of black metal significantly differs from that of Storming, there is in one sense a musical kinship, because it too is a kind of throwback in sound and style, and in its ancient and mythic moods — as you’ll discover by listening to “Desolation Bestowed“.

The press materials circulated on behalf of the label to scribblers like me describe Deogen‘s new music as “ugly yet aristocratic,” and that summing-up fits like a glove. From the first moments of “Desolation Bestowed“, the music flares in sensations of elevating grandeur — expansive, mysterious, but also revelrous — backed by warm bass tones and skipping beats. The evolving melody, elegant and near-flutelike in its changing resonance, seems to seductively dance.

On the other hand, other layers in the richly layered music are swarming and searing; the snarling and screaming vocals are hellish; and that bright melody begins to warp and wail, creating a distressing experience that’s even more uncomfortable when the uglier riffing around it dismally writhes and the drums start hammering.

Again like some aristocratic medieval dance, the song also brightly bounces, breaking up the stately circling whirl of the participants. Deogen continue to layer together those captivating lead melodies with august fanfares, vividly rippling piano arpeggios, trilling guitars that rise and fall, and changing drum cadences — but the vocals remain harsh, frighteningly furious, and vampyrically vicious.

It’s a bewitching song in so many ways. It seems to carry us far back in time but also into a different dimension, where risen spirits and angry undead fiends carry on, often joyous but also disheartened, and in all respects completely heedless of modernity.

Iron Bonehead will release The Graves and Ghosts of Yore on CD and vinyl LP formats. To coincide with the release of this second album, Iron Bonehead will be reissuing Deogen‘s debut album, 2020’s The Endless Black Shadows of Abyss, on CD and vinyl at the same time. As usual, ordering opportunities will become available on the release date (November 14th) at the location first linked below.

Also below, you’ll find a stream of the new album’s first advance song, “Spectral Winds Rise“. In its initial phase it’s fiery and thoroughly exhilarating, and then becomes considerably more gloomy and grief-stricken. It includes somber spoken words and ends with a beautifully haunting piano-and-organ harmony. Like today’s new song, it also sounds well out of this world.

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https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/
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