SHADES OF BLACK: AFSKY, DEADLAND, VEIL LIFTER, BAALBERITH

(written by Islander)

As was true with yesterday’s SEEN AND HEARD roundup, 21 days have passed since I was able to compile one of these SHADES OF BLACK collections. Unlike yesterday’s roundup, I’m not able to make up for the lapses with a mega-sized assembly today, due to… baseball. It’s the last game of the regular season for my hometown team, and I’m going.

I know that confession damages my kvlt credentials, yet I’ll try to repair the damage with the following five selections. Stylistically they’re not in the same vein, and yet I do think there are some connections, including a certain classical elegance and immensity among some of them, and a certain dark and even depressive cast common to some, which seemed fitting for the day — roughly one week into the Fall season, with The Big Dark looming here in the Pacific Northwest.

 

AFSKY (Denmark)

Last week Eisenwald released another song from Afsky‘s forthcoming album Fællesskab. (I shared some thoughts about the first advance song, “Natmaskinen,” here.) The name of the new song is “Den der ingenting ved tvivler aldrig” (the one who knows nothing never doubts).

As I hear it, the trilling melodic harmonies swing, sway, and soar, like an elegant dance, yet they reflect moods of yearning and maybe even despair as well as exultation, especially in the soloing. The drumming provides a constant push and pull of tempo and intensity, while the screeching and flesh-searing vocals seem to manifest fury as well as anguish.

Easy to get swept away by this one, and then to wander on with it firmly rooted in the head. Eisenwald will release Fællesskab on October 17th.

https://afsky.lnk.to/natmaskinen
https://bio.to/afsky
https://afsky.bandcamp.com/album/f-llesskab
https://www.facebook.com/afskymusic/

 

DEADLAND (U.S.)

I’ve reached backward in time for this next selection (back to July of this year), which I just recently discovered. It’s an EP named The Incantation by the one-person Minneapolis-based tempest Deadland.

The EP’s title song, the first of the three in the running order, lures listeners with a brief acoustic-guitar lament and then the music suddenly becomes immense. Staked by a steady booming beat, the riffage rolls forward in dense and decimating waves, calculated to submerge listeners in their dark power. Matching that harrowing darkness, the vocals are commanding — an expulsion of vicious, serrated-edge roars and maniacal howls.

As the song evolves the music both rises up to towering heights of bleak magnificence and explodes like a typhoon, with drums hurtling and the riffing slowly writhing like some vast whirlpool. Shrill and frantic fretwork pierces through the heaving and turning storm, whose daunting power continues to both slow and surge, and the vocals continue to flood the listener with their agonies.

The storm does break, as Deadland brings forward acoustic strumming and deft, elegant picking. Both the melody and the dark mood of that interlude connects with those of the song’s storming phases, but renders them in a passage of loneliness and isolation. And then the tempest comes blazing again, undergirded by full-throttle low-frequency upheavals.

I won’t try to map the next two songs in as much detail as the title track. Suffice to say that the more compact “Ageless Are We” and the extensive “Hollowed” are both just as capable of swallowing listeners whole. Both create sensations of sweeping, classically inclined symphonic might while seeming to shake the earth apart in the deeper decibels. Both create moods of fear and anguish, moods of distress and desolation. Both include vocals of shattering intensity.

“Hollowed” also includes an extended guitar solo near the beginning that is a thing of tragic beauty, ravishing and heart-breaking. “Hallowed” also includes frightening vocal gasps and an abrasive, musing guitar interlude that pulls listeners into the EP’s most outright depressive phase, sodden with grief and hopelessness.

Once again, within “Hallowed” Deadland displays a serious talent for crafting and elaborating dark melodies that get stuck in the head — and yet, another tempest awaits before the song ends, doing its best to pull us all under again.

https://deadlandmpls.bandcamp.com/album/the-incantation
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2MLHr7kOLM3urMzLT1Z4hq?si=e_2J7VY_Qx-pyf3PUgPz1g
https://www.facebook.com/p/Deadland-61566070803315/

 

VEIL LIFTER (Italy)

My next selection is another record released in July of this year, a debut EP named Night Grotesqueries by the Italian band Veil Lifter. Based on the description at Bandcamp, it is now a solo project, though a previous second member is credited with work on the EP.

I regret to say that because my time is short today, for the reason explained above, I’m not able to express as many thoughts about these five tracks as I would like. What I’ll do is focus on just one of them, and then briefly sketch ideas about the rest.

The song I picked is “Crumpled Sleeve“, which comes third in the running order. On the one hand, Veil Lifter show us an ugly and savage side, especially through the vocalist’s ravenous gargoyle growls and certain dismally dragging chords. On the other hand, the song’s riffing seems to manifest moods of gothic horror, a diabolically slithering, brazenly blaring, and fiendishly darting presence. To strengthen the mood, something that resembles organ tones join in.

On the third hand, the music includes nuanced bass lines and dynamic drumming. The bass briefly stands solo as a prelude to yet another of the song’s facets, a shrill lead-guitar rendition of the song’s devilish chief melody, which itself is a prelude to blasting beats, swarming guitars, and a riveting solo that re-spins that melody.

Witches and warlocks worldwide will love “Crumpled Sleeve“. It will make a good addition to any playlist for Samhain Night. The rest of the EP is also a fiendish delight, including the moody but mesmerizing classical piano interlude that draws the curtain back on this pentagram-shaped pageant — and the scary electronics and other strange sounds that suddenly replace it in the “Intro” track.

Among those other tracks, “Votive Candles” often sounds grand and elegant, like the shadow-cast waltz of dead spirits within a crumbling castle hall — but the shrill guitar spasms occurring within its stately movements are utterly berserk and bizarre, and eventually chaos reigns within the song as a whole.

“Psalm X” and “Nocturnal Werewolf Mysticism” are also well worth your time; if you fall for “Votive Candles” and “Crumpled Sleeve“, you’ll fall for them too.

https://veillifter.bandcamp.com/album/night-grotesqueries
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577738855083

 

BAALBERITH (UK)

To close today’s brief compilation I have the first song publicly revealed from the forthcoming fifth album, We Are The Infernal, by the British black metal band Baalberith. Its name is “The Final Redemption“, and it’s also the album’s final track in a listing of 12.

Immediately, the riffing is humongous and heavy, quickly slugging like an immense battering ram and slowly groaning like the exhalations of some foul, immense beast. The vocals are themselves convincingly bestial, the kind of hateful, cutting snarls and berserk screams one can imagine expelled by something that wants your throat in its jaws. At maximum tempo, the song is also a head-mover, thanks in part to the gripping drum cadences.

But the song turns out to include other dimensions besides delivering brute-force trauma and demonic ferocity. Bright, elegantly dancing tones surface above martial drums and persist; the riffing crashes like a ruinous storm-front, backed by weaponized blast-beats; a guitar solo spirals and spins in piercing tones of exultation; the vocals howl like wolves as the riffing and the tempos themselves twist and turn, but ominous spoken words also come forth; the fretwork becomes skittering and feverish, but elegantly gleaming and glinting tones also arise again.

https://ukemrecords.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-the-infernal
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095264171222