SHADES OF BLACK: ONE OF NINE, WALDGEFLÜSTER, KALEŽ, ARROWS

(written by Islander)

Today I decided to focus on four selections: two songs from forthcoming albums, a debut EP, and a debut full-length. The two songs are tragic but breathtaking. The EP and the album are also stunning, in different ways.

The world often seems like it’s either burning or devolving into a deep and disgusting pool of glop (“shit” is an overused word), but if you immerse yourself in what I’ve chosen today I wager you’ll forget all about that, even if it will all eventually come back to you.

 

ONE OF NINE (U.S.)

I was introduced to the mysterious One of Nine roughly two years ago when premiering a song from their debut album Eternal Sorcery in advance of its release by the Wolves of Hades label. This past January they followed the album with a split release with Hulder. Both releases made a strong positive impression. The impression of their new Tolkein-themed album Dawn of the Iron Shadow is even stronger.

Before diving into the album’s first single, “Dreadful Leap“, I had to do some research. The song is based on the tragic tale of Túrin, son of Húrin, and his sister Nienor, who became Níniel. Tolkien narrated the story in different places and different ways, including in The Silmarillion. I read that novel long ago, but not a lot of it stuck with me, including the narrative of these siblings’ tragedy, so I needed a refresher and found a couple of online summaries (here and here).

To brutally truncate the tale: Túrin struggled near-endlessly throughout his life against the Dark Lord Morgoth, and seemed cursed at every turn. When Túrin was a child his mother Morwen sent him to the kingdom of Doriath to preserve his safety, but kept Nienor with her.

After many conflicts, escapes, triumphs, and tragedies over many years, Túrin finds a naked Nienor at a grave in the forest of Brethil. She was under a dark spell of amnesia cast by Morgoth’s dragon Glaurung and could not tell him who she was; they did not recognize each other, and by then Túrin was himself using a different name, Turambar. Túrin called her “Níniel, Maid of Tears,” and she accepted the name. They fell in love and married.

Ultimately Túrin succeeded in destroying the dragon Glaurung, but was hurt and fell into a swoon, succumbing to the dragon’s spell. As described here, as Níniel came to search for him, “The dying Glaurung then removed Níniel’s amnesia with his last words, forcing her to confront the revelation that Turambar, the man who she had married, was her own brother Túrin, and that she was carrying his unborn child.”

Horrified, Níniel killed herself by leaping into the gorge of Cabed-en-Aras. When Túrin learned what happened, he used his black sword Gurthang to take his own life.

Photo Credit: Gabriel Jaklik

Now you’ll better understand the way that One of Nine introduce their song “Dreadful Leap“, as well as the significance of the song’s name:

The page turns, and old sorceries die.
Túrin, son of Húrin, has struck dead Glaurung, the dread worm!
And in such bitter triumph the doom of his house is revealed as the golden veil upon Nienor’s mind is forever lifted.
Thus do we, the Nine, lift our voices in the retelling, to proffer a glimpse upon the ‘Dawn of the Iron Shadow.’
‘Dreadful Leap’ is unveiled, and its echo now resounds in every hall.

On this song Hulder appears as a guest vocalist, in the guise of The Tear Maiden (i.e., Níniel). We know she’s going to make an appearance before listening, but we don’t know when or how. Before she enters the musical narrative One of Nine quickly create a harrowing experience, assaulting the listener with hammering drums and scalding demonic howls and submerging the senses in a vast wave of dense but also piercing riffage that distressingly writhes. A rapidly whirling but even more distressing lead-guitar surfaces… and then so does Hulder.

Her voice soars and falls; it pitches the song to an even greater height of intensity; and the tragedy it carries is unmistakable. The music then slows and becomes even darker, and even the bright ring of a solo guitar doesn’t dispel the sorrow, but seems to weap. Glittering and shimmering keys create a mesmerizing and mystical interlude over primitive beats, and then the whirring lead guitar retrieves the devastated melody and carries it forward as the music hurtles and expands again.

One of Nine continue to add textures and cycle through the song’s gripping motifs, leading once again to Hulder‘s rising voice in a final crescendo, though only the brittle and doleful (and maybe medieval) notes of a guitar backed by mysterious sonic mists provide the denouement.

A cynic might say that One of Nine made a place for Hulder in the song and picked it as the album’s lead single because her current profile is much higher than One of Nine‘s, and that might be true, but if so it’s equally true that the rise of her voice at two carefully chosen moments is stunning. Yet the whole song is stunning, a sonic tapestry of heartbreak and mythic, ancient grandeur, and the harsh vocals are just as shattering in their own way as hers.

Dawn of the Iron Shadow will be released by Profound Lore on October 31st. The absolutely eye-popping cover art was created by Ted Nasmith (illustrator of Tolkien’s works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion). The album also includes a guest appearance by M. of Lamp of Murmuur as Morgoth on “Behold the Shadow of My Thoughts“.

https://oneofnine.bandcamp.com/album/dawn-of-the-iron-shadow
https://www.instagram.com/oneofnineblackmetal
https://linktr.ee/oneofnine

 

WALDGEFLÜSTER (Germany)

One powerful lament is now followed by another. The next song is the title track to Waldgeflüster‘s new double album, titled Knochengesänge I and Knochengesänge II. As described by the band’s label AOP Records, they are “dedicated to the carousel of thoughts on the subject of mortality and legacy”.

As in the case of One of Nine‘s song, I had to do some research about this one, using an online translation tool to understand the song’s name (it appears to mean “Bone Song”) and the German lyrics. The translated lyrics are quite poetic. They unfold through two voices. One is a musical composer who has awaken from a dream in which he encountered “the Bone Man” in a snowy forest. The other is the Bone Man, who speaks to the composer:

It rattles through bone and marrow.
When bones sing.
On my rotten bones, the wind plays the final farewell.
Do you hear its fateful melody? Are you ready?
Have you created what you had to create?
Your songs resound because you knew how to touch hearts.
Your songs resound to dance bittersweetly.
…
Are you still seeking the answer that eludes me?
The one monument that resists my cold breath.
But you can create until your fingers are cold and stiff.
Someday, even the last of your songs will vanish in the wind.

This chilling tale of Death comes through in the video for “Knochengesänge” too, along with footage of the band’s impassioned performance of the music.

Photo credit: Oliver König

The vocals of Winterherz are the song’s compelling centerpiece. Their emotional intensity is transfixing, whether he’s viciously snarling, gloomily intoning, screaming in pain, or heroically singing his heart out, flying toward the clouds.

But of course there’s a lot more to the song than his voice, beginning with a soulful violin lament and continuing into a slow rhythmic march freighted with swarms of grieving, gnarled riffage (but still elevated by the vividly whirring violin). The music is heavy but elegant, and almost theatrically dramatic. It ebbs and flows, rings and ravages, becomes expansively sweeping and gently spellbinding. Near the end it also propulsively pounds at the same time as it arcs toward celestial heights.

Knochengesänge I and Knochengesänge II will be released by AOP Records on November 7th. The album includes Charlie Anderson (Panopticon) on strings, a guest vocal performance by Austin Lunn (also Panopticon, of course), and another guest vocal performance by Alboîn. The band’s long-standing friendship with Panopticon further continues by featuring Austin Lunn‘s illustrations and Bekah Lunn‘s photography.

EU shop: https://shop.aoprecords.de/de/
U.S. shop: https://www.indiemerchstore.com
Bandcamp: https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/knochenges-nge
https://www.waldgefluester.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BlackMetalWaldgefluester

 

KALEŽ (Croatia)

Now we come to the debut EP I mentioned at the outset, one I immediately found to be remarkable. It was created by the Croatian band Kalež. They introduce it with these words:

Our music is fueled by malice, spite and frustration of everyday life on Earth in an effort to transmute the still waters of material limitations. In pursuit of a life with more meaning we can occasionally glimpse beyond the veil of ignorance.

We would like to use this opportunity to present to you our first 3-song EP, Udovi zaboravljenih bogova.

We find ourselves surrounded by limbs of forgotten gods, we are beset by the urge for the void and we seek to transcend the laws of gravity.

Although the EP is only three songs long and lasts less than 16 minutes in total, it presents quite a varied experience. That final statement quoted above turns out to map the path through the names of the three songs.

The title song, “Udovi zaboravljenih bogova” (Limbs of forgotten gods), creates a powerful first impression, and a distinctive one. The riffing is dissonant and furious, weirdly warping and brazenly blaring. The drumming is thunderous and riotous and unpredictably variable. The heavy bass undulations are viscerally turbulent. The raging vocals are eye-popping in their full-throated snarling savagery.

But it’s the continuing guitar permutations, often punctuated by sudden stops and starts, that continues seizing attention, creating sensations of menace and madness in unorthodox ways. Among the song’s unraveling surprises it also includes a dismal but also frighteningly hallucinatory phase strongly augmented by those big bass tones and inventive drum progressions, and a concluding torrent of wildly contorting guitars and bludgeoning beats.

The second song “Težnja ništavilu” (The pursuit of nothingness) is the longest of the three, and the centerpiece of the EP beyond simply its position on the track list.

It begins with an overture that creates a stark contrast with the way the title track ended — one whose reverberating notes create a musing, meditative, and mysterious spell. From there, while intensifying the spell, Kalež gradually add layers, including also-mesmerizing bass-and-drum patterns. They build toward a phase of discordant, disturbing, and disorienting guitar melody and the re-emergence of those gritty, howling vocals.

There’s no mistaking the feelings of extreme torment and pain in the music, or the hatefulness of the vocals, but the dynamism of the band’s songwriting reveals itself again. The riffing feverishly throbs and twists; the drums hammer and tumble; the song thereby gets a listener’s head moving; but those disturbing minor-key melodies also return.

The band also stalk; the bass clangs and claws; the guitars become extremely sinister; and then either the bass or a guitar convulses in violent frenzies, a foretelling of the rampant violence and derangement that explodes near the end.

The final song, “Gravity“, is the shortest song, and wastes no time scraping at the listener’s mind with a viciously vibrating riff. Having stuck their hook in that way, the band once again start freely twisting and turning, this time accompanied by unhinged gang cries from the vocalist(s).

The band’s inclination toward disorienting and distressing minor-key dissonance is again evident, and they make the experience even more discombobulating with siren-like starts and stops, a savagely metal-mangling bass attack, electrifying drum-fills, and frenzied bursts of insectile fretwork.

To repeat: Kalež‘s debut EP is a startling and tremendously impressive experience — elaborate and surprising in its ever-changing and unconventional permutations, sharp in its execution, and professional in its production. It might merit the term “avant-garde black metal”, for want of a better term. It should leave people who look for music that’s off well-trodden paths hungry for more from these Croatians. It has certainly become one of my favorite short-form releases of the year.

The EP’s cover art is the work of Detestor Graphics.

https://kalezband.bandcamp.com/album/udovi-zaboravljenih-bogova
https://www.instagram.com/kalezband

 

ARROWS (Switzerland)

The Helvetic Underground Committee has been a Swiss circle populated by many impressive bands. That remains true even after the circle decided to change its name last March to Jünger Tumilon. They explained then that “while ‘Jünger’ simply means ‘disciple’ in German, ‘Tumilon’ is an ancient form of the German verb ‘taumeln’, which means ‘to stumble’.” And so they elaborate:

Consider the creative process as a human, who eagerly treads a path. He stumbles, as the path is uneven and rocky, rife with obstacles such as fallen trees that hinder his traversal. Occasionally, however, his continuous tumble upon this path makes him appear to be floating, even dancing – as if in an altered state.

Jünger Tumilon stands for the zealous devotion to the creation of art, it stands for the creator and the creative process. Stumble on, Jünger Tumilon!

Humble words, but there’s really nothing stumbling about the debut album of Arrows. I discovered it thanks to the following recent notes at Machine Music:

Another return, of sorts. Not of a particular project, however, but of a mind, and one of the best musical minds of the past decade or so, to boot. The mind in question belongs to Menetekel AKA Helvetic Underground Committee AKA Ungfell, Ateiggär, Kvelgeyst, and many others, including, most recently, the wonderful Ophanim, who released one of my favorite albums of the previous year.

Arrows, it seems, has been around for quite some time, but this is their first recording and it is one that brings me much joy. A grandiose, at times ritualistic-feeling visions of black metal as a hole at the center of things that sucks your life away and leaves just a very pretty void. Among Menetekel‘s many projects this one might be the most accessible, but it retains enough menace and wonder to blast your face (and soul) off.

The album, Yearning Arrows; Cloven Suns, unfolds through four long songs — long but never dull, though of course I didn’t know that would be true, even after reading the enthusiastic reaction at Machine Music.

Most of us make decisions about how to invest our listening time based on fairly quick first impressions, and I’m no different. But I had a strong conviction that delving all the way into these four tracks would be worthwhile, just based on the first minute of “At War With Peace“, the song that’s set to play first at Bandcamp.

In that first minute Arrows introduce vividly sizzling and screeching guitars and momentously booming drums, and then leap into a dangerous war charge of thundering beats, wildly screaming guitar layers, and barbaric growls. It’s an exhilarating way to begin, and the rest of the song didn’t disappoint either. To the contrary, it becomes even more head-spinning.

The guitars continue creating sounds of ecstatic bedlam around dramatically changing beats and prominently heavy bass progressions; the vocals explode in crazed yells; and the lead guitar frenetically explodes as well. The band also inflict brutally clanging throbs, neck-cracking drum-chops, malicious gang shouts, and swirls of sound that are alternately searing and shivering.

Things also get even more hallucinatory and even more tumultuously savage. The music generates swaths of incendiary sound, but also (out of left field) includes brightly darting and ethereally shimmering keys, paired with the contrast of battering-ram grooves, plus near-sung vocals of a haunting demeanor.

Just that one song reveals the alchemical ways in which Arrows have chosen to combine ingredients of black, death, and even doom metal — and not-metal. The other songs also prove to be fascinating alchemies as well, which is why they earn their lengths.

Arrows repeatedly prove they know how to punch and batter with heavyweight force, how to burn minds and light fires under pulse-rates. But they also continue bringing in contrasts that include eerie and ethereal keys, a truly vast array of vocal expressions both harsh and clean, solo and choral (including expressions that didn’t surface in “At War With Peace“), and moods that are as variable as the tempos and instrumental accents.

They create experiences of cold-hearted, bone-smashing cruelty; near-gothic ghostliness; sinister menace; weird ecstasy; celestial sweep; ominous haughtiness; feral lust; sprightly joy; lurching gloom; and primitive ritualism (among other things). They get heads bobbing, legs bouncing, and minds swirling. They chill the listener’s skin; they create strange dreams; they also clobber and corrode.

They deftly deploy electronics that are usually foreign to extreme metal. They repeatedly combine contrasting ingredients across the sonic range, from the subterranean to the stratospheric, from near-HM-2 levels of mauling distortion and gut-plundering heaviness below to flares and flows of shrill and skittering strangeness and near-symphonic wonder way up high. The vocals cross an equally wide terrain of sound and style.

And the thing is, every one of the songs elaborately incorporates many of the aspects highlighted above, and does so with such wicked inventiveness and such careful craftsmanship in both songwriting and execution that it’s very easy to lose track of time. It really is a thoroughly dazzling album, and one of the most remarkable I’ve heard in 2025.

More encyclopedic musical minds than mine might be able to string together other bands whose influences might be detected in the album, or who might be useful reference points. I welcome that, I’m curious to see what people might suggest, but I’m not up to it. And I’m not sure it would help if I haven’t yet succeeded in inducing you to dive in all the way already.

https://arrovvs.bandcamp.com/album/yearning-arrows-cloven-suns
https://www.facebook.com/helveticundergroundcommittee