(written by Islander)
For reasons that are too embarrassing to disclose I’m getting a very late start today. Fortunately, I did my listening in previous days and made my picks yesterday. It’s just the writing that I left for this morning.
With so much time already gone before I started, and honestly not feeling great, I again wondered whether I should bother with the writing since I’m just providing my reactions to music everyone can hear for themselves. Can’t I just say, “You should listen to this,” and leave it at that? It’s a recurring internal debate. And I resolved it as I always seem to do. But to keep this from being ridiculously late, I did shorten it from six selections to four.
By way of introduction, I arranged the music so you’ll start of in the midst of some fireballs, then pull back in a moody kind of interlude, then heat up again, and then drift away in contemplation of the season ahead (or the one slowly ending).
BEFOULED MALEDICTION (U.S.)
First impressions can sometimes be deceiving. The first impression of today’s first song is that it’s made for musical masochists who crave the thrills of being viciously blasted and blistered and exposed to vocals that sound like a blend of napalm and needles. That’s all well and good, because the disguised malefactors in Befouled Malediction are obviously quite adept at bringing the punishment. But… as you continue listening to the song… you’ll learn their music is even more impressive and emotionally multi-faceted than first impressions suggest.
The song’s opening is indeed a battering and blistering fury, but a slowly wailing melody emerges and sorrowfully soars from within the vast tides of fire and thundering beats. Moreover, the percussive ferocity vanishes, replaced by a solemn cadence, and the caustic riffing transforms into a grim and grievous throb (though the vocals are still frighteningly unhinged).
The scale of the sound expands; majestic drums boom; and then the song resumes battering and blazing. The music seems to frantically flicker and desperately writhe, though another eerily wailing melody slowly rings its grief through the tumult, and it continued ringing in this listener’s head long after the song ended.
The song is “Ritual” (if you want to know what kind of ritual it is, read the words here). The album is Desperate Necromancy. It will be digitally released on October 30th by Ordo Vampyr Orientis (through Bandcamp and Ampwall), and vinyl editions will be released on November 13th by Ixiol Productions and Dawnbreed Records. Press materials offer this description of the album’s narrative:
“Desperate Necromancy follows a warlock whose world is shattered by the sudden death of his beloved, sending him beyond the boundaries of mortal knowledge in search of a way to reverse the inevitable. What begins in grief gradually turns toward forbidden rites, necromancy and the dangerous conviction that death itself can be defied”.
https://ordovampyrorientis.bandcamp.com/album/desperate-necromancy
https://ampwall.com/a/ovo/album/desperate-necromancy
https://www.dawnbreed.com/
https://www.ixiol.com/
KILAT (Australia)
As I previewed in the introduction up above, we’re leading off with musical fireballs, not just that Befouled Malediction song but also this next one from the Melbourne-based trio Kilat, whose music is rooted in Javanese and Balinese cosmology.
I think you’ll hear the connection between the broiling yet also glittering timbre of Kilat’s riffing and that of Befouled Malediction, though Kilat’s hurtling rhythms sound even heavier, like rapidly booming mortar fire. There’s also a connection in the vocals — Kilat’s are also scorching and maniacal.
The riffing is dense, raw, and ferocious. It submerges the listener like a raging tidal wave while the bass thunders and the drumming executes sudden electrifying shifts. The vocals remain utterly berserk, like a person tearing themself apart in agony. Without becoming any less submersive, the music also grandly blares and insidiously slithers above the rumbling earthquakes in the low end.
The name of this song is “Antaraning Jagat“. It’s the first one revealed from an album named Tirai Niskala (Kilat’s second full-length), which is set for release on October 10th. I owe thanks to Rennie from starkweather for pointing me to the song.
https://kilat.bandcamp.com/album/tirai-niskala
I HELVETE (Finland)
Now we come to the “interlude” song I promised at the outset. It’s the second single, “Hiljaisuuteen“, from I Helvete’s new album Halla. It’s an interlude in the sense that it marks a dramatic change from the first two songs in today’s collection, but you’ll discover that it eventually builds to very dramatic heights.
Backed only by a grimly musing bass, the song’s opening guitar instrumental immediately creates a deeply melancholy mood, and even the deep, gravel-toned vocals sound wretched when they arrive (though the song’s somber melody may be influencing that impression). As the vocals rise into a terrible howl of pain, the full band join in and expand the scale and intensity of that sorrowful melody.
The band also bring in a rippling lead guitar, whose piercing arpeggios add to the song’s depressive demeanor, and ruined howls again magnify the feeling of inner torment. The band also layer the grieving lead guitars as the drums become more animated, and they back the proceedings with grand cascades of sound. Near the end they pitch the intensity to its highest point with an extended guitar solo that’s magnificent but heartbreaking.
I already wrote about the first single from Halla (“Nälkätalvi“). After listening to it again yesterday and re-reading what I wrote, I concluded that despite the enthusiasm of those words they still didn’t go far enough in expressing how epically stunning the song is. If you haven’t heard it yet, or even if you have, I’ve included a stream of it below, along with the newer single.
Halla will be released on November 6th. A third single is scheduled to debut on October 15th.
https://ihelvete.bandcamp.com/album/halla
https://www.instagram.com/i_helvete/
https://www.facebook.com/iHelveteband
FERNDOM (U.S.)
On two previous occasions early this year (here and here) I shined our dim spotlight on a debut album named Tesuque by Ferndom from Austin, Texas. The music within Tesuque is quite distinctive, in part because the solo artist within Ferndom (the cleverly named Vileinist) is a violinist, and uses an electric violin to replace traditional guitar parts throughout the album.
On this past Bandcamp Friday Ferndom released a new two-song EP named Sorrows of Summer. Vileinist has explained its inspiration:
The muse for Sorrows of Summer came from no further than my own front door. While most of the northern hemisphere is already enjoying a taste of autumn, here in Austin we’re still facing triple digit heat indexes. It has been another record-setting summer. Last year we got devastating floods, this year we got a drought. In fact, it did not rain at all during the entire writing and recording process. Hyperbole, but I often feel I am at the frontlines of climate change and I channeled this feeling into the EP.
The EP’s title song is indeed an incinerator, but one that’s thoroughly exhilarating. Like the first two songs in today’s collection, this one opens by submerging us in waves of searing sound and cranking up the blast-beat throttle, but what really seizes attention is the whirring, high-flying wail of the violin, at once magnificent and distressing in its outpouring of emotion.
The vocals are raw and shattering, like the screams of a wounded panther, but the violin and its moody variations on the main melody are still the star attraction. There’s grandeur in the music, but also anguish, and when the drumming dramatically slows the violin begins to sound like an ethereal indigenous flute, and that’s mesmerizing.
Some nimble bass-noodling surfaces, along with percussive variations, and Ferndom layers in raw and ragged tones along with those ethereal flute-like melodies. The intensity ramps up to a crescendo that’s both blazing and spellbinding, both caustic and spirit-like, a crescendo whose intensity hits its high point with the return of those tortured howls.
The second song on the EP is “The Last Snow“. Vileinist describes it as “an ambient track that pays homage to Drudkh’s ‘The First Snow’ and is about pushing our planet to the point of no return”. By contrast to the EP’s first song, this second one feels not incendiary but possibly sweltering, though I also began to think of it as wintry in its desolation.
The ambient element of the track creates sweeping panoramas of sound, whose gradual rise and fall feels like vast exhalations of grief. Against that sorrowing backdrop Vileinist brings in brittle picked notes of varying tones, high and low; their vibrantly darting and mournful sounds are reminiscent of a banjo. All these features of the music repeat, over and over again for nearly nine minutes, creating a haunting trance.
https://vileinist.bandcamp.com/album/sorrows-of-summer
https://www.instagram.com/vileinist/#