SEEN AND HEARD: DAWN OF A DARK AGE, ELLENDE, 1914, LAETITIA IN HOLOCAUST

(written by Islander)

This is another rare day when I have no premieres on our calendar and therefore have some free time for other things. Not wanting to spend it paying bills, hand-washing dishes (the dishwasher is busted), doing laundry, cleaning the cat box, or taking calls from world leaders interested in trying to understand what the fuck is going on in the U.S., I decided to get a head start on my usual weekend roundups of new music and videos.

Without further ado, here we go:

 

DAWN OF A DARK AGE (Italy)

I got giddy when I saw the news this week that Dawn of A Dark Age will be releasing a new album in December (via My Kingdom Music), and even giddier when I realized we’d received a promo for it. Coincident with the announcement, the band released a mythic video for a song off the album named “Il Rito Della Consacrazione” (The Rite of Consecration). It makes me giddy too.

The beautifully made video does portray a mystical rite (along with gorgeous natural settings, and fantastical ones), a rite set in ancient Roman times involving a beautiful antlered woman, a sacred bull, swaddled babies, a Roman nobleman, and old handsome priests.

As for the music, it again represents this band’s unique fusion of atmospheric black metal, doom, folk, and jazz. Once again, clarinetist (and keyboardist and bassist) Vittorio Sabelli leads the band, but now with a new singer, Ignazio Cuga (aka Brusiòre) of the Sardinian folkish black metal band KRE’U. Lots of guest performers are also listed among the credits, in addition to drummer Diego ‘Aeternus’ Tasciotti.

In this new song Dawn of A Dark Age incorporate mysterious acoustic picking, even more mysterious shimmering tones that sound like ethereal choirs — and an unusual amalgam of deep, gravel-toned words (which resemble throat-singing) with soaring song. Sabelli also brings one of his clarinets into play, creating a slow and entrancing melody, as well as abrasive notes which give the music a darker and more depressive shade.

Shimmering and sizzling tones create both greater intensity and greater mystery, and the steady drums accelerate, adding to the building tension. A clarinet harmony (perhaps with a flute in the mix) enhances the tension further. Strangled screams join in with those monstrous, abyssal vocals. The music rings and scathes, becomes ominous and frightening, and very much sounds out of this world.

When the tension breaks, the clarinet again takes the lead, reminding us (along with the video) that we are still in a realm of magic, myth, and mystery.

The name of the new album is Ver Sacrum. It’s set for release on December 12th. The song below is the shortest one on the album. The other three range from nearly 9 minutes to more than 14. Very eager to hear them.

https://mykingdommusic.bigcartel.com/products?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=ver+sacrum
https://mykingdommusic.bandcamp.com/album/ver-sacrum
https://www.facebook.com/dawnofadarkage
https://www.instagram.com/dawn_of_a_dark_age

 

ELLENDE (Austria)

Now we move from a bull to a boar.

Yesterday the Austrian atmospheric black metal band Ellende debuted a new single and animated music video for the song “Wahrheit Teil II” from their new album Zerfall. Here’s the comment of Ellende mastermind L.G.:

“‘Wahrheit Teil II‘ is about the terrifying and powerful forces within the universe and the illusion that we are somehow in control. Yet it is also a story of rebellion, willpower, and friendship. I created and animated this entire video by myself over nine months. Thank you for being with me. Enjoy.”

The video creates a metaphor for this message. It depicts a once beautiful woodland home ruined and occupied by a monstrous spider, a spider that eventually bestrides the world. It also presents an immense boar bearing matches to a frightened human, who understands he must burn the home and flee on the boar, racing through forests and cities as armies assault the giant arachnid.

The song itself is quite an impassioned and engrossing tapestry of sound that gradually builds in intensity. Its overture of woozily ringing guitars and elegantly rippling piano keys is beautiful and beguiling, but as we see the spider, the guitars begin to sizzle with menace, the bass throbs, and the drums clatter. Those sizzling guitars become more intense, joined by a wailing and moaning arpeggio and caustic screams.

The mood has become very dark, daunting, and dismal — but the song then channels resilience (but not yet triumph). The boar races; the drums scamper; the wailing lead guitar soars; the double-bass rumbles; the riffing feverishly blazes; the vocals explode in ragged screams. The music seems to yearn, to strive, but something about it still sounds uncertain about the outcome (and the outcome of the video’s narrative also seems uncertain).

Zerfall will be released on January 2nd by AOP Records.

https://shop.aoprecords.de
https://ellende.bandcamp.com/album/zerfall
https://napalmrecords.com/english/ellende
https://www.facebook.com/ellende.official

 

1914 (Ukraine)

I’m sure that either I or one of the other NCS slaves will write more completely about 1914’s new album Viribus Unitis (“With United Forces”), which is being released today by Napalm Records, but for now I’ll just comment about a song and video premiere that occurred earlier this week.

As reflected in the song titles, the album follows a Ukrainian soldier during bloody conflicts in World War I from 1914 through 1918. The song revealed a day or two ago is “1918 Pt. 3: ADE (A Duty to Escape)“, and it includes guest vocals by Aaron Stainthorpe (formerly of My Dying Bride, High Parasite). Napalm Records explains: “We follow the concept album’s protagonist, Ivan, through his escape from devastating captivity into new horrors of war — uncompromising, evocative, and unforgettable. Along with the single comes an animated video by Costin Chioreanu.” And here’s a statement by the band’s vocalist (2.Division, Infanterie-Regiment Nr.147, Oberleutnant – Ditmar Kumarberg):

“This is a story of unbreakable will to live, of the burning thirst for freedom and love. A story of faith in friendship, and the strength that comes from those who stand beside you. Where one falls, together, you rise. You conquer the freezing mountains, the deep snows, and even captivity. Beside you are your brothers-in-arms—the ones who lift you in the darkest hour.

‘Those who survived enemy fire – refuse to lose their friends’: And when old values collapse, and the world you knew fades—the only thing holding you together is love. Love for a daughter. For a wife. For your family.

‘The only hope that I care is to meet my daughter and wife’: Love, friendship, and mutual support—the things that make us human. Especially in times of war.”

The fascinating and beautifully rendered animated video is a gripping portrayal or death and armaments, of broken corpses and dead souls rising, and of beleaguered, haunted soldiers forging on through jagged mountain climes and snow-covered paths, beset by memories of what once was and visions of inspiration.

The song is an amalgam of black metal and doom that’s every bit as dramatic and daunting as the video. It brings to bear lonely, dark, and grieving notes and ghostly singing, but also immense low-frequency throbs, gun-shot drums, and wretchedly wailing melody. It creates a desperate, warlike charge, like churning tanks, accompanied by savage, serrated-edge howls of explosive intensity, but also by Stainthorpe’s gloomy but soulful singing.

It brings together the two vocal styles, with their intensity (and their tonal range) rising and falling. The music becomes expansive, and even more deeply stricken in its mood, with only the brief pinging throb of strings to break up the music’s immense thundering and stridently keening march of grief.

https://lnk.to/1914-ViribusUnitis
https://www.indiemerchstore.com/collections/1914
https://x1914x.bandcamp.com/album/viribus-unitis
https://www.facebook.com/1914OfficialPage

 

LAETITIA IN HOLOCAUST (Italy)

To close today’s small roundup we return to Italy and a song from a forthcoming EP by the avant-garde band Laetitia In Holocaust. The EP includes only two songs, but the one you’ll find below — “Gioia e Pianto alle Teste dei Leoni” – is more than 12 minutes long. I’ll share this statement about it:

The focal themes on which the lyrics are built around are the revival of vitalistic values, the transience of vigor and beauty, and the poison of Christianity; the nostalgia, contempt, and rejection that blacken fragments of dreamlike and symbolic visions (the lions’ heads, simulacra of life cycles [predators – themselves prey – trophies] and testimonies of a dead but not defeated time).

The expressive center is thus settled on the tone of a funeral lament, a determined and vengeful lament, a cry of war and pain, a laughter that promises blood; a memory remains, in closing: the natural childhood of a lost world, of a dried-up source.

Like the other songs in today’s collection, this one arrived with a video, which draws on old archival film footage to create a hellish and horrifying pageant of demonism and death of many kinds (much of it in the animal kingdom), of hideous torture and execution, and of natural and unnatural calamity.

As for the music: Laetitia In Holocaust have always marched to the beat of their own drummer, and that’s displayed again here, although “march” is a misnomer for all the song’s many kaleidoscopic twists and turns — all of them unsettling.

Backed by a vividly warbling bass with a fretless tone and vivid back-beats, the abrasive riffing writhes and moans, quivers and squirms, creating an aura of menace and madness. The music also rings like fractured chimes or the pulse of a warped siren — tones of misery — joined by vicious snarls of fury and fanatical howls.

The riffing also creates harmonies of spasm and contortion, generates experiences of swarming chaos and percussive riot, seems to swirl and flicker and blare in ecstasy (the ecstasy of madness), and seems to cruelly churn and chew, sometimes punctuated with short stops and starts.

Madness reigns almost throughout the entire song, in all of its manifestations. It’s an experience that’s equally exhilarating and terrifying. Even near the end, when the chaos abates, the song doesn’t sound sane. What musically leavens the madness here and there isn’t hope, but agony.

The second song on the EP is “Of Feathers and Doom“, which I’ve also heard. Only five minutes long this time, the song is still a surreal shapeshifter, and an unnerving one at that. It incorporates dissonant riffing, both abrasive and shrill, gnawing and squealing. That vivid bass still plays a key role, as do the utterly vicious vocals and the constantly in-flux drumming.

It’s a very weird experience, but the guitar interplay is as transfixing as it is nightmarish. Well, it’s transfixing because it’s nightmarish, including the misery channeled by the vibrant trill of the lead guitar and its partner in that terrible harmony.

I suppose we should be thankful the second song ends after five minutes, lest we be left cowering in the corner, huddled and stripped of all hope, trying to re-string the strands of our sanity.

The name of the new EP is I Rise With The Dead, and it’s intended as a companion piece to the band’s 2021 EP I Fall With The Saints (reviewed here). It will be released on November 28th by Masked Dead Records/Sulphur Music, which also reissued the earlier EP on CD in the summer of this year.

https://maskedeadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-rise-with-the-dead
https://maskeddeadrecords.com/product/laetitia-in-holocaust-bundle/
https://maskeddeadrecords.com/product/laetitia-in-holocaust-i-rise-with-the-dead/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100042679674458