(written by Islander)
In contemplating the discography of the Portuguese black metal band Black Cilice, the word “prolific” leaps to mind. Beginning with their first five(!) demos released in 2009, they’ve released something almost ever year — more demos, many splits, a trio of EPs, and six albums. Now there’s a seventh album on the horizon, slated for release by Iron Bonehead Productions on May 1st.
The album’s name is Votive Fire. It includes only four songs, but they are long ones, none shorter than seven minutes and the opener almost reaching 10 1/2. What we have for you today is the third of these tracks in the running order, “Into the Inner Temple“.
In past works Black Cilice has proven an ability to create shattering but transfixing sonic cataclysms, the kind of all-consuming hurricanes of sound that can leave a listener feeling stunned. The mysterious individual behind Black Cilice has also rendered such extravagant musical maelstroms in ways that can genuinely feel transportive and transcendent rather than wholly ruinous, and even (perhaps unexpectedly) mesmerizing.
In the song you’re about to hear, the music immediately soars and sears above momentous booming drums, in wavering and wailing tones that both scar and gleam, augmented by wild screams that are even more abrasively scarring. All of that creates an expansive atmosphere that’s dark and perilous, unearthly yet also desolate.
When the drums leap forward into blasting tirades, the music and the vocals become maniacal, and the lead guitar frantically quivers, blisters, and seems to cry out in its torment. The expansiveness of the song remains vast, drenching the senses as the drums continue slowing and accelerating, moving between phases of terrible, tragic grandeur and feverish distress.
The sound is dense and immersive, but produced in a way that allows the varying ingredients in this amalgam of haunting and harrowing sensations — hornlike blasts, wailing melodies, piercing fretwork convulsions, unhinged screams — to stand out just enough, without diminishing the song’s engulfing power.
We have this further information to share from Iron Bonehead’s press materials:
A key to understanding the album, arguably his most monolithic to date, is to ponder the album’s four component song titles: “Released by Fire,” “Vows Sworn for Centuries,” “Into the Inner Temple,” and “Deconstruction of All Realities.”
Conceptually, and as usual, Votive Fire channels a dark, timeless, and spaceless energy. Past lives, manipulation of energy, isolation, self-knowledge, and transcendence are thematic touchstones here, as the votive fire manipulates both sides of the veil.
Iron Bonehead will release Votive Fire on CD and vinyl LP formats, and order opportunities will become available on the album’s May 1 release date.
IRON BONEHEAD:
https://ironbonehead.de/
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions/
BLACK CILICE:
https://blackcilice.bandcamp.com/