(written by Islander)
I feel somewhat better today as compared to yesterday (thanks for asking), though the achiness produced by the inoculation hasn’t completely vanished. Once again, I looked forward to assembling the following column as a welcome distraction from the twinges of soreness.
By way of overview, I’ll say that today’s collection leans into eye-popping tempests of imposing scale and blood-heating intensity, though it also includes psychotic episodes and a musical curveball I’ve saved for the very end.
BEHEMOTH (Poland)
So far, no one here has reviewed Behemoth’s latest record, I, Scvlptor, which was released on Friday. I don’t think it’s because none of our writers liked the album, but because we all tend to devote our attention to bands whose profiles are much less prominent than Behemoth’s. I for one enjoyed the album a lot.
As you may know, I, Scvlptor includes two cover songs, intended as an homage to bands whose music inspired Behemoth’s birth or paved the way toward it. One of those songs is Behemoth’s cover of Venom’s “In League With Satan“, and it includes a vocal contribution from Dimmu Borgir’s mainman, Shagrath. They chose that song for a video that was also released on Friday to help draw attention to the album. Like all of Behemoth’s Grupa 13 video productions, it’s very well-made and a ton of fun to watch.
It was difficult to imagine in advance what a band like current-day Behemoth would do with a song as primitive and catchy as “In League With Satan“, but they embrace it with straight-faced fervor; they pump it up with booming and bombastic power; they glorify it with swirling seven-string guitar textures and choral chants; and the snarling tandem of Shagrath and Nergal add to its… evilness. Of course, it’s still damned catchy.
https://behemoth.bfan.link/i-scvlptor
http://www.iscvlptor.com/
https://behemoth-store.com/en-ea/collections/i-scvlptor
https://www.facebook.com/behemoth/
TROLLDOM (Sweden)
Now that I’ve dangled a big shiny bauble at the top of this collection (shiny like obsidian), how should we follow it? My answer is with a song that rivals Behemoth in the music’s tempestuous power, although Trolldom traffic in “addictive and darkly melodic Swedish Black Metal excellence, honouring the glory days between 1995 and 1998 when so many classics were released” (to quote the band’s label, Debemur Morti Productions).
The name of Trolldom’s new album (their third) is Tronen. It’s the work of songwriter, guitarist, and keyboardist Swartadauþuz, aided by a lineup of notable session musicians: Thorn on vocals; Graf Nuzawandils (MARTRÖÐ) on keyboards; Sortilege on bass, and Kevin Paradis (BELPHEGOR) on drums.
The album’s first single, “Etter Falla…“, achieves epic status with whirling and soaring riffs and keys, high-octane drumming, and unhinged screams that sound hot enough to melt steel. Yet, despite the gleaming glories of the orchestrally enhanced high-end melodies, the cauterizing intensity of the screams, and the furious percussive pumping, Trolldom don’t drown the nimble baselines, which deserve to be heard, and they add moments of spritely elegance and folkloric remembrance as well.
But mainly, this is a song that will take your breath away and give your head a swift spin.
DMP will release Tronen on October 30th.
https://trolldom.bandcamp.com/album/tronen
https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti
VREDEHAMMER (Norway)
Last week Per Valla’s Vredehammer surprise-released a new self-titled single, one that includes eye-popping drumwork by Nils “Dominator” Fjellström. It arrived with a lyric video (in Norwegian) leading the way.
The riffing is fast-picked and feverishly twitchy, but its thrashy, blood-rushing energy also incorporates a blaring and squirming siren-like pulse that creates a big hook. Moreover, it’s a multi-faceted song that also includes swirls of anguished melody, cut-throat howls, daunting bursts of symphonic sheen, and fervent choral singing.
That swirling melodic refrain of anguish also ushers the song into a slower, darker, and more brutishly hard-hitting final phase, one in which the furious, scalding vocals flow back and forth between the channels. It creates a dramatic counterpoint to the warlike ferocity of what precedes it.
https://vredehammer.bandcamp.com/track/vredehammer
https://www.facebook.com/Vredehammer
HARDIESSE (France)
I paid attention to this next song because Hardiesse joins together the talents of Wÿntër Ärvn and Hyvermor (from Grylle, Hanternoz, Hyver, and Véhémence), and I quite enjoyed their 2023 debut demo Rêverie Féodale. What they’re bringing us now is a new EP named Tristesse Vespérale.
The EP’s first single “Beffroi” comes across like a grand yet grievous anthem from a distant century, as processed through a lens of whirring black-metal riffing and drums that go wild as often as they steadily march. The vocals are even more wild (and frightening), providing an amalgam of serrated-edge growls, possessed screams, and larynx-ripping cries that are truly frightening.
The music gloriously ripples and sways (visions of banners waving on old battlements again come to mind), and yet there’s also something about the melodies which sounds sorrowful. Come to think of it, the album’s title translates to “Evening Sadness” (while the band’s name translates to “Boldness” or “Daring”, and that makes sense too).
Tristesse Vespérale will be released by the Antiq label on September 30th.
https://antiqofficial.bandcamp.com/album/tristesse-vesp-rale
https://www.facebook.com/kkbdk
IHLOOSUHREE (Belgium)
Now we’ll move from individual songs to a complete album, one titled Slaven Der Ontbinding that was released in mid-August by the Belgian black metal group Ihloosuhree. I’ve been meaning to say something about it for weeks, and finally made time to do so.
Ihloosuhree’s music isn’t half-assed in any respect. They aim high and fly high, and much like some great raptor they’re capable of ripping their prey (i.e., the listener) and seizing it with crushing talons. Also like a raptor, however, they’re capable of dramatically veering and diving in directions you probably won’t see coming.
The title song, which opens the album, sears and swallows the listener. The music is dense, it flows in enormous waves, and it burns. It’s so overpowering you almost don’t notice the hammering drums, the molten bass-lines, or the harrowing howls behind it — though all of those ingredients eventually become more prominent as the song moves forward.
Those burning waves of fire-bright sound gradually elevate, and their distressing intensity escalates. The music begins to sound ill and hopeless despite the bone-bruising impact of the rhythms and the unchained torment of the screamed vocals.
The music also contorts and convulses, feverishly quivering in shrill, dissonant tones. But when the pace abates near the end, we’re left to the un-tinder ministrations of a brutally clanging bass and drum-beats that feel like they’re trying to punch all the way through our bodies.
The following six songs also often feature soaring, vibrantly flickering and brilliantly gleaming guitars and keys; murmuring bass-lines that are equally vibrant; non-stop percussive dynamism; and non-stop vocal vitriol that has left sanity far behind, especially when the snarls and roars explode into devastating shrieks.
The music is elaborately layered, and more frequently dissonant and disturbing than harmonious. It crashes, slashes, and shivers in ways that sound desperate, beaten-down, or mystical, but without warning the band also go on the attack with no holds barred.
Speaking of dramatic changes, “De Stank Van Farizeisme” sounds like an episode of sinister, head-spinning, and sometimes nausea-inducing psychedelia (it also features attention-seizing bass-and-drum interplay). I would nominate it for scariest song on the album, though it has some close competition — namely, the also psychedelic and psychotic follow-on song, a short one named “Verheerlijking Der Wanorde“, and the album closer “Fatalistische Faalangst“.
Those songs, and others, also demonstrate how cannily Ihloosuhree pull from musical well-springs well beyond black metal to make music that’s so often strange, unsettling, and nerve-jangling. I began to think of the music as a warped hybrid of progressive and black metal, with a preference for mutated, hallucinatory melody (or anti-melody) and the kind of vocal performances you think would land the vocalists in an emergency room… and then an asylum.
Oh hell, there’s no point in trying to single out scariest songs on this album. The whole album is scary, but the ways in which the band induce fear and psychosis are so inventive and intriguing (and twisted) that it’s no challenge to stay rooted into it, even if you may need therapy afterward.
(Thanks go to Rennie from starkweather for being the first person to tip me off about this album.)
https://ihloosuhree.bandcamp.com/album/slaven-der-ontbinding
https://www.facebook.com/ihloosuhree
THE LΩVECRAFT SEXTET (Netherlands)
Now for the curveball I promised.
I concede that this closing song is something of an outlier in a column devoted to shades of black metal, but truth be told, it would be an outlier in any other collection of music too. If you’ve dabbled in the previous releases of The Lovecraft Sextet, that claim won’t surprise you.
If you haven’t previously dabbled, the principal figure in The Lovecraft Sextet is the prolific Jason Köhnen from Bong-Ra, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, The Answer Lies in the Black Void, and Celestial Season.
The name of the project’s new album is Penance (De lijken van de Gebroeders De Witt), and it is described as “a morbid and unsettling reflection upon a 1675 work by School of Amsterdam painter Jan Baen, which is used as the forthcoming album’s cover art”. I want to excerpt the following passage about that from a press release we received:
In 1672, the De Witt brothers were beaten, mutilated and hanged before a crowd for alleged treason. It is said that the observers themselves committed acts of cannibalism with the brothers’ severed body parts. The event and subsequent painting by Jan Baen offers a reflection on incredible human barbarism that has always profoundly affected Köhnen.
Köhnen describes his first encounter with this unique work:
“I think I first bumped into it at art school back in the late 90s while covering the Golden Age of Dutch oil paintings. The brutality and the background of the story did haunt for me for a while. Not only is the painting by a fellow Dutchman, but the story also covers a barbaric execution of these two brothers. It is also the only recorded account of the public eating – yes, consuming – politicians. A warning for the future maybe… Love at first sight, or more like disgust and fascination at first sight.”
The first and only single from the new album, “Si Quaeris“, appeared last week. That same press release describes it as “a potent fusion of nocturnal Chamber Opera, lo-fi Black Metal, Darkjazz and Electronic experimentation”. For the album as a whole, it credits Jason Köhnen for guitar, upright, drums, organ, vocals, electronics & all compositions; Colin Webster for saxophone; and Lilian Tong for soprano vocals.
“Si Quaeris” proves to be as fascinating as that description quoted above. It opens with the grieving wail of a saxophone backed by equally mournful orchestral strings and lycanthropic howls. It’s a soulful and haunting overture, and Lilian Tong’s beautiful operatic voice creates an even more pronounced funereal mood when she arrives.
The grief-stricken saxophone harmonies continue to rivet attention, but honestly, so do the ugly snarls and growls, which couldn’t be more different from the music in their mood, or more different from the purity of the singing. Yet that ugliness, which suits the hideousness of the events depicted in Baen’s painting, is part of what makes the song very hard to forget.
https://thelovecraftsextet.bandcamp.com/album/penance
https://www.facebook.com/thelovecraftsextet