(written by Islander)
You could make a nearly endless list of traumas experienced by human beings that are more severe than having a sick pet. But having a sick pet can still be traumatic. I speak from experience — uncomfortably recent experience.
My wife and I live with two brother cats to whom we’re intensely attached. They have the run of our house but they’re never more than a few feet away from us. They’re very affectionate, very smart (for cats), very beautiful. We’re careful not to let them outside because they’re small, they’ve never been in the wild since birth, and we live in a forest full of predators of different species.
Last night after my wife and I had returned home from dinner and watching a ballgame, one of the cats began foaming at the mouth and manically racing around the room. We keep anything that might be an ingestive danger to them out of their reach, so it was perplexing. We scurried around trying to help him and trying to discover what might have caused this.
After about 15 minutes passed with no change, we managed to catch him and put him in a cat carrier, got in the car, and started driving to a 24-hour emergency animal-care clinic.
That place is about a 40-minute drive away. For that entire time the cat cried and screamed, an incredibly wretched and unnerving sound, much louder and much worse than when he and his brother cry when we take them to their annual vet checkups. Focusing on driving was a challenge. I’m getting anxious all over again just writing this.
We had never been to this clinic before, so some time was lost giving intake info to the receptionist while our cat continued to make noise — though the noise was not nearly as distressing to hear. And then a trained person (although not a vet) checked all of his vital signs. Of course, the foaming at the mouth had already stopped, he wasn’t frantic anymore, he started purring while the woman checked him out, and she said all of his vital signs were normal.
We were all left to puzzle about what had happened, but the caregiver said the cat seemed healthy, that we should take him home and return if the problem returned. She also said there would be no charge for the visit because the cat seemed well, which I found to be kind of amazing.
Forty minutes later, we were home and the brothers were reunited and ate some cat food together. We got on the couch and let them doze on us for a little while after their very late dinner. We needed to unwind too. Sleep didn’t come for us until well after midnight.
All of that is why I got a very late start on today’s SHADES OF BLACK, and that is also why my plans for the column kind of fell apart. As I had mapped it out yesterday, it was to include three single songs, an EP, and two full albums. I’ve had to leave the albums by the wayside – just not enough time to re-listen to them and try to write something intelligible about them before we go out to watch another ballgame at mid-day.
Our cat seems his usual sweet and happy self this morning.
SZNUR (Poland)
Powerfully good memories of Sznur’s previous releases impelled me to check out the first song in today’s collection, but I would have checked it out anyway based solely on the cover art (up there^^^) for the album that includes it. Anything related to The Planet of the Apes novel and movies is like catnip to me.
The song turns out to be a seriously good ass-kicker, but that was no surprise to me at all. It’s packed with big slugging grooves, big slashing and throbbing riffs, flashes of broadly sweeping and feverishly swirling tones, and the kind of ferocious guttural vocals you might imagine that furious ape is making.
The drums also thunder, and the extravagant sweep of the keys becomes distressing, but the band continue bringing us back to those huge muscle-moving grooves, those lightning-flash sonic spasms, and riffs that swirl in pain. There’s no point at which the beastly vocals stop coming for our throats.
Also: We have a certain year-end list of infectious songs that I’m responsible for compiling. I can pretty much guarantee this one will be on it.
The song is the title track to Sznur’s sixth album Cwel (which, based on my research, seems to mean “scum” in English, or something even more degrading within Polish prison subculture). Cwel will be released on April 17th by Godz Ov War Productions.
Sznur, by the way, is the Polish word for “rope”, and the rope they have in mind takes the shape of a noose.
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/cwel
https://godzovwar.com/shop/en/
https://www.facebook.com/projektsznur
ACOLYTHUS (Finland)
Unlike Sznur, Acolythus is a new discovery, in paet because they’re a new band. I’ve read that the lineup features members from Convulse, Sargassus, and Jotungrav, and that “the band was born as an outlet for the musicians’ black metal aspirations”.
Their debut album, Unearthly Kingdoms ‘Neath Lifeless Stars, is set for release on May 8th by Inverse Records. The song below, “Scholars of Empires Beyond“, is the album’s first and only single. It makes for a very compelling teaser for the album as a whole.
Ringing keys and towering chords quickly create a mood of dark and distressing grandeur, and blasting drums and swirling riffs drive the intensity higher while those keys continue to dart and whirl like pipes. Gritty, snarling vocals, martial beats, and savagely slugging grooves add to the music’s warlike mien while those dancing keys continue digging deeper and deeper into a listener’s head.
There are a few slower moments in the song, in which the notes vibrantly trill and also sound woeful, but in the main it’s a hard-charging and mythic experience, like some ancient saga brought back to life. The lyrics (which you can find in full at YouTube) invoke Choronzon, “great mother of abomination”, and the scholars call for Lucifer to awaken and give rise to the “age of reason”.
https://push.fm/fl/acolythus-scholars
https://acolythus.bandcamp.com/album/unearthly-kingdoms-neath-lifeless-stars
https://www.facebook.com/Acolythusband
SCYTHE OF MEPHISTO (Italy)
Scythe of Mephisto is a new Italian band who have rooted the music on their debut EP in classics of 1990s Swedish melodic black metal — think Dissection, Unanimated, Lord Belial, and Necrophobic. The performers look to be very young:
On the debut EP, Till Life Do Us Part (released on April 10th by Masked Dead Records), these two were accompanied by a session bassist and drummer, but now it appears they have a third member who will play those roles and provide backing vocals.
We have plenty of evidence from the ’90s that very young metalheads are capable of making groundbreaking music that endures for the rest of their lives. Of course, I’m not claiming that Till Life Do Us Part is groundbreaking — even Scythe of Mephisto make no such claim — but the point is that despite (or maybe because of) their youthfulness, they’ve made a very good debut here.
The EP opener, “Moonlight over Babylon“, sends brilliantly glittering riffage gloriously soaring above rampant drums, hurtling bass notes, and scorching screams. The song’s vast and sweeping melodies mostly persist as the drum tempos and rhythms change, but their mood moves between sounds of desperation, fury, and woe.
The band also draw back from the daunting scale of the music to make room for a seductively ringing and mysteriously beckoning clean-guitar solo backed by flickering sonic shine, before ramping up for a furiously propulsive and grandly soaring crescendo — one punctuated with hard-thrusting grooves and unhinged vocal barbarism. At the end, the music falls into a downcast and grieving mood.
That opening song makes pretty clear that Scythe of Mephisto have bold ambitions, nothing timid about them at all, and a talent for creating heart-stirring, melody-drenched music with an epic aesthetic. They reinforce those impressions with the next two songs, “Bloodstained Sacrifice” and “Chants of Qayin“.
Both of them deliver piercing, high-energy riffs evocative of changing emotions; keys of panoramic sweep; even more piercing lead-guitar flourishes, deftly delivered; dynamic rhythm-section work that frequently brings daunting heaviness to the mix; and bloodthirsty vocal intensity — all of it produced in an even-handed way that allows all the ingredients to shine. I found it easy to be captivated by them.
All three of the opening songs are quite strong and all cut from the same extravagant cloth, but I think “Chants of Qayin” is probably the best of them if you want a single taste-test, in part because it includes variations in the band’s main musical throughlines — a beautifully mystical mid-song interlude and heroic (though a bit strained) singing.
The EP does include a fourth track, too, an “Outro“. It’s quite different from everything that precedes it — an elegant and ghostly piece featuring piano, organ, and wavering musical apparitions.
https://maskedeadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/till-life-do-us-part
https://www.facebook.com/Scytheofmephist
https://www.instagram.com/scytheofmephisto
NON SERVIAM (France)
To close, here is an audio-video experience that manages to be both strangely entrancing and very unsettling.
In the extremely well-made video a manic young woman manically does various manic things. She seems to be sweltering, to yearn for cooling water, but she leaks black blood, and in her mind she may be drowning; she may wish to die. Non Serviam members Void and Moon are occasionally with her in the video, or at least fleetingly present in her unsettled mind, providing a soundtrack to her madness. (The principal performer is Agathe Pailler, and she’s amazing.)
In the music, Non Serviam again fortify their reputation as sonic shapeshifters with an adventurous disregard for genre boundaries. Around steady thumping beats the music moodily twangs, mysteriously shimmers, and abysmally moans, and Non Serviam’s members sing together, high and low, in hallucinatory and haunting tones.
The music also begins to abrasively squirm and spasm and to rake like a blizzard as the drumming furiously erupts and the vocals transform into cauterizing screams and frightening roars. Frantic voices speak and wail as a bass twangs and furiously scrapes. The music anxiously twists and contorts, warps and warbles, beneath Moon’s high-flying voice and glimmering frequencies.
After a moody pause the music erupts again, torquing the tension, the turbulence, and the agony to a breaking point, again anchored by big industrial grooves. And the changes, both musically and vocally, continue unfolding in the song’s unnerving final minute.
The song is “Abject Sacrifice“. It’s from a new Non Serviam album named La Lune Dont Mon Âme Est Pleine, which is set to be released on June 12th through a new alliance between Non Serviam and Lay Bare Recordings, who say “the album ranges from Baroque music to cybergrind, sludge, darkwave, industrial, and experimental black metal.”
https://non-serviam.bandcamp.com/album/la-lune-dont-mon-me-est-pleine-album-2
https://www.instagram.com/nonserviamcircle
https://www.facebook.com/NonServiamCircle