Valerius de Saedeleer (Belgian, 1867–1941) – “A Winter Landscape”, 1931
(written by Islander)
That painting up there popped into one of my news feeds today. I saw it on my phone this morning as I was sitting outside having a cup of joe and a few smokes before daybreak, with the outside temperature at 37°F. With about 17 hours to go at this point before December begins, that all seemed like fitting synchronicity.
Where I live in the Pacific Northwest we’re well into what everyone here calls The Big Dark. No snow (that rarely happens), but the days are short and usually beset by wet gloom even when the sun is (allegedly) above the horizon. Perfect days for chilly and gloomy music, but also good days for music that lights fires. What I’ve picked for this column today manifests in both those ways.
Of course, December brings more than The Big Dark in the earth’s northern latitudes. It will also bring a rising tide of year-end lists. Tomorrow we’ll be re-posting one from another site much larger than ours, and also asking our visitors to share their own. And then one week from tomorrow we’ll begin rolling out the lists of our own writers, beginning with Andy Synn’s usual weeklong takeover. (Actually, it will probably begin this coming Friday, if Andy does what he usually does and shares his list of the year’s best EPs in advance of his main list week.)
In between now and Friday we’ll also be clearing the slate for all the year-end LISTMANIA stuff, catching up on reviews and interviews I have in hand from some of our other writers. Of course I’ll still be posting premieres every day, and I should note that this coming Friday is also the last Bandcamp Friday of the year.
Well, enough with looking ahead. Let’s now look at some things that have surfaced in the recent past.
UMBRÍO (Chile)
I want to begin with a song by the Chilean band Umbrío that flooded my head with visions of both fire and ice when I first heard it a few weeks ago. It also felt like I’d just stepped on a live power line still surging with tremendous voltage.
“Envueltos en signos errantes” is the song’s name, which I guess translates into English as “Enveloped in wandering signs”. It is indeed an entirely enveloping song, discharging waves of frantically trilling riffage that sounds jubilantly cruel, backed by furiously battering beats and fronted by scorching howls. Even more jubilant (and more berserk), a shrill lead guitar flickers like fire in the midst of the tidal maelstroms.
The drumming shifts gears a lot, and the riffing, though still fast, also begins to sound dismal, or at least more cruel, and even the wild howls cry out in a way that’s haunting. But the song creates an even bigger change, pausing and then slowing, making space for the lead guitar to ring out a surreal, seductive, and sinister melody, perhaps with melodic roots in the band’s homeland — followed of course by another thunderous and blazing combination of sleet-storm and firestorm, but this time with gloomy yet possessed singing in the mix.
This is the kind of song that once heard isn’t easily forgotten. After first hearing it, I found that the entire album that includes it, Quintaesencia Nocturna, was released on November 20th by the Romanian label Vampiric Militant Legions.
The album as a whole, much like the song above, is a very interesting shapeshifter. It includes an elegantly spooky ambient Intro track and then engulfs the listener in “El vacío de una flama bajo el firmamento“, which again deploys dense, piercing riffage and booming percussion but creates a much darker and more stricken atmosphere than the lead single above, especially when the vocalist begins to solemnly and mournfully sing.
The tidal riffing sounds expansive, almost symphonic (hornlike tones also blare), but this time the repeating melodic refrain is steeped in misery and hopelessness, even when penetrated by those maniacally flickering guitar leads, rabid screams, and urgently grasping bass-lines.
The shapeshifting continues in the remaining six songs (including “Envueltos en signos errantes“) as Umbrío continue to demonstrate both the breadth of their musical interests (which clearly extend beyond black metal) and their wide-ranging instrumental and vocal skills.
Time and again, they establish memorable melodic refrains and then run them in cycles, but they also dramatically break things up in a variety of ways, changing tempos and moods and introducing instrumental variations (including constantly changing drum patterns). “Vientos del clamor del pasado” and “Delirio del misticismo nocturno” are particularly stellar examples of that, but the dynamic variability is really true of all the songs. Even the instrumental “Interlude” and the mainly instrumental closer “Coda” (both augmented by solemn voices) play significant roles in maintaining Umbrío’s tight grip on a listener’s attention.
As they move along, Umbrío create sensations that are wild and also reverent, dangerous but also emotionally desperate and beleaguered, grand in their sweep but also nocturnally haunting or even joyful (almost like a folk dance at one point). The baritone singing remains just as much a chilling marvel as the beastly screams.
There is of course a serious risk that a very accomplished album like this will pass unnoticed by the many people who would enthusiastically embrace it if they heard it, especially because it is this small label’s first release. I hope the attention given here will spread the word to many more ears.
https://vampiricmilitantlegions.bandcamp.com/album/umbr-o-quintaesencia-nocturna
https://www.facebook.com/p/Umbr%C3%ADo-100063997892243/
MOON WISDOM (?)
I’ve done some searching but I’m not sure where Moon Wisdom are from. Perhaps Portugal, because their debut album Let Water Flow will be released in mid-January by the previously Canadian but now Portugal-based label Hypnotic Dirge Records? Well, regardless, this trio of Faith (vocals), Kaelos (guitars), and Lorenzo (drums) hooked me with the first single from the album, “Dark Shades“.
Hypnotic Dirge describes Moon Wisdom as a band “with unrelenting vigor, channeling the raw spirit of black metal’s second wave while weaving a current of punk energy and depressive blackgaze.”
In the case of this first single, Moon Wisdom unfurl a rapidly trilling riff that sounds both frantic and desperate, immediately accompanied by hacking beats and furiously rumbling bass-lines. Once they’ve set that hook, the riffing begins to viciously skitter and feverishly dart, just in time for really nasty vocals to emerge, sounding like the ugly snarls of a vampire being strangled but still trying to get at your throat.
The riffing continues to mutate, fleet-fingered but quickly shifting between moods of violence and despair — but the song also suddenly slows, making room for mysteriously glinting guitar notes, shimmering chords, and bursts of sonic shine, a kind of ethereal musical apparition that beckons with pale, glowing hands. That instrumental interlude remains beguiling even when the rhythm section return and add a bit of prog-rock flair to the proceedings.
When screaming and roaring vocals return, the band gradually ramp up the intensity, capping it with a frantically rippling guitar solo, piercing in its exhilarating convulsions. Big stomps and grand chords back up that extended guitar hysteria, but the song also expands in manifestations of brazen and blazing — yet somehow also dark — grandeur.
https://hypnoticdirgerecords.bandcamp.com/album/let-water-flow
https://www.hypnoticdirgerecords.com/news/pre-orders-live-moon-wisdom-let-water-flow
https://www.facebook.com/MoonWisdomBM/
https://www.instagram.com/moonwisdomblackmetal/
ULTIMA NECAT (Germany)
To close this relatively brief Sunday column I’m turning to a personally favored label, Vendetta Records, and their very recent vinyl release of Fragments of Pain, a debut EP by the German trio Ultima Necat. (The EP was initially released by the band on tape and digital this past February, but I didn’t know about it then.)
The EP includes three substantial songs, denominated as “Fragments of Pain I-III“, all of which flow into each other. In Part I the band waste no time drenching listeners in dense, depressive chords that are half-grimy and half-searing, matched by tortured screams and slow-moving beats that periodically erupt in skull-smacking fills. The music as a whole becomes more tortured as the drums find a more open throttle and the raw riffing turns into a seething whirlpool, but as the drums slightly back off the guitars extravagantly ring out, as if pleading.
Deep, haunted roars also ring out, almost like droning monastic chants, and the riffing continues morphing as well, seeming to channel agony but also haughtily clanging. Throughout the first song (and in the next two), the rhythm section prove their worth repeatedly with constant variations that both complement and contrast with the changing fretwork and vocals — vocals that once again resort to terrorizing screams as the song climbs toward its closing zenith of burning and blast-driven… pain.
That opening track really does end in a way that will take your breath away, and the two successive Parts of the EP achieve the same feat when they reach flood-tides of intensity. But both of those ebb as well as surge, ebbing in different ways — with dark acoustic strumming, brittle slashing tones, and grim chants in Part II, and lurching tonal groans in Part III (a song that also includes the echo of impassioned choral voices, glittering melodies, and military drum tattoos).
There are through-lines across all three tracks, through-lines established in the opening song and then brought forward. They are through-lines of mood — moods of bitter frustration and untreated hopelessness, as well as frantic confusion and outright fury. Not happy music — not even close — but absolutely riveting.
https://vendettarecords.bigcartel.com/product/ultima-necat-fragments-of-painl-12
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/album/fragments-of-pain
https://www.facebook.com/UltimaNecatOfficial/
https://inaeternam.bandcamp.com/album/fragments-of-pain