(written by Islander)
We last considered the music of the Ukrainian progressive doom band Vin de Mia Trix in 2017, the occasion being the release that year of their second album Palimpsests. They now have a third one on the way, eight years and a Russian invasion after the last one.
The title of the new album, This Landscape Is Alive, reflects its themes, described as “a poetic and philosophical exploration of the troubled coexistence of the human and the landscape.” What we have for you today is the premiere of the new record’s opening song, “Exit Glacier“.
photo by Svitlana Dolbysheva
Palimpsests was an imposing work, nearly 100 minutes of music divided among only four songs, each of them in the range of 19 – 30 minutes. This Landscape Is Alive is less imposing, at least in its duration. Once again, Vin de Mia Trix deliver only four songs but they collectively total about 47 minutes, which would have represented only one side of Palimpsests. The songs are still long-form compositions by most standards, but more compact by Vin de Mia Trix standards.
The difference in scale, which makes the new album more “approachable,” isn’t the only difference between this one and the last one. Across the four new songs Vin de Mia Trix also extend their prog-minded excursions in different ways, while leading listeners into changing experiences that are pulverizing, spellbinding, and head-spinning.
Turning now specifically to “Exit Glacier“, here is what the band have shared with us, to share with you:
“Exit Glacier is the name of an actual glacier in Alaska. The song’s freezing funeral doom evokes an image of something that is both cold, alien, and indifferent to human existence. Lyrically, it is a story of a poet who tries to find the words to describe the glacier’s majesty. They attempt different approaches, both poetic and scientific, start questioning their own existence, and eventually die of starvation amidst the icy wilderness. Meanwhile, the glacier abides, oblivious to human struggles.”
The band’s label, Robustfellow Prods., further describes the song as “a meditative tableau of nature’s grandeur and the impossibility of language to capture its elemental vastness.”
Palimpsests also inspired thoughts of nature. Here’s how our erstwhile writer Norwegian writer Gorger described it (in part) eight years ago:
The music is mostly calm and fluid like a peaceful stream of clean water. A trickling mountain stream reflecting the shining rays of sun from a bright blue sky and the deep green lush vegetation along the river bank. The river winds, though, create turbulent currents and swirls, nuances that distort and wipe out the reflections. It strikes rocky obstacles that are unable to hinder the flow, but that throw the water masses around and shuffle the composition and relative location of each drop of water.
In significant respects “Exit Glacier” also shines, but it isn’t like a peaceful stream. The guitars create brilliant swirls of sound in the music’s upper reaches, but the music titanically crashes and groans below, more like the earth-shaking stomp of a beleaguered giant than the flow of a stream. Even those gleaming drifts up above seem to wail in distress.
The vocals as they first appear are equally massive — cold abyssal growls and tormented howls that elevate from a throat lined with grit. The drums fire like methodical gunshots and begin to throb while the bass thunderously pounds. Gradually, the music’s intensity increases, growing more distressing even as it surges, and then it also begins to twist and turn.
The bass grabs attention with its nimbleness and nuance; when the rhythm section vanish for a time, the guitars vividly pulsate but also sound confused and forlorn. When the avalanche-strength crashes resume, the band’s other vocal manifestation takes the stage — a soaring singing voice that’s both wrenching and spine-tingling to hear, especially when doubled in a plaintive harmony.
Like a vast glacier, the music’s scale and sweep magnificently expands. It’s towering and daunting but the rippling and sparkling guitars also cause it to glisten like sun-blazed ice, equally harrowing and mesmerizing. And in the song’s penultimate phase the guitars ring out in a way which reminds us that the song’s yearning protagonist finds himself on his last legs, and we’re reminded again by grim spoken words and strangled screams of terrifying intensity in the midst of crushing and soul-scouring sonic calamity.
Here in the U.S. on this “Black Friday”, and I guess in many other places, we’re being bombarded by advertisements, a strafing run of SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! For 13 1/2 minutes, or longer if you play the song repeatedly, “Exit Glacier” will take you far away from all that (though if you want to spend, you should consider making this stellar album a gift to yourself).
The remaining three songs on This Landscape Is Alive (each of which differs from the others in important ways) include a fascinating two-part song, “Ferrissian Void” and “Automonument (Ferrissian Void Epilogue)“, and the final track “The Arnheim Domain“. They are all in most respects less straight-forward, more adventurously prog-metal-influenced, often more hallucinatory, and generally more mind-blowing than the song you’ve just heard.
The band explain that the two-part song was “partly inspired by the radical architectural visions of Rem Koolhaas” and “delves into the (anti-)utopian projects of the early 20th century, striking in their extravagant ambition and perfect disregard for the natural environment,” whereas the closing track was “inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s story,” and “questions the hubris of human culture in its relentless drive to master the landscape.”
VIN DE MIA TRIX:
Andrii Tkachenko—vocals
Serhii Pokhvala—guitars
Yurii Sirenko—guitars
Les Vynogradov—bass, vocals
Ihor Babaiev—drums
This Landscape Is Alive will be released by Robustfellow on December 5th, on MC and digital-download formats.
PRE-ORDER:
https://robustfellow.bandcamp.com/album/vin-de-mia-trix-this-landscape-is-alive
VIN DE MIA TRIX:
https://www.facebook.com/vindemiatrixdoom/
https://vindemiatrix.bandcamp.com/album/waves-stars