(written by Islander)
I’ve previously explained that the forthcoming debut album of Ferndom piqued my interest before I ever heard a note. First, it’s a one-person project from my hometown of Austin, Texas (the person goes by Vileinist, a clever name for reasons you’ll soon learn). Second, the title of the album is Tesuque, named for a place near Santa Fe in New Mexico that I and family members have visited frequently.
And, well, the third reason for getting interested is that Vileinist is a violinist, and uses an electric violin to replace traditional guitar parts throughout the album.
The occasion for first paying attention to Ferndom at our site was its release of the first single from Tesuque, a completely captivating song called “Cacophony of Ice“. We’re paying more attention today because we’re premiering a video for the album’s second single, “Stone-Toothed Abyss“.
If you’ll forgive another personal note (and even if you won’t!), the inspiration for this song also brought to the surface another big wellspring of nostalgia. The song is about Carlsbad Caverns, an immense and astonishing cave complex that’s part of a national park in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico. My family took me there as a kid numerous times on summer trips to visit cousins in El Paso. But I’d have been enthralled by “Stone-Toothed Abyss” even without the big surge of nostalgia.
Lyrically, the song transforms the cave into a frightening thing, like an ancient and ominous entity, with its formations depicted as “pillars of dread,” “fangs of the earth,” “dripping jaws with an endless climb,” or like an “army of stone,” wretchedly waiting and watching.
The song is at least as frightening (and as haunting) as the lyrics, delivering not the ominous, dripping cold of ancient subterranean vastness but a fiery torrent of violin-based black metal. With rumbling thunder in the low end and clattering outbursts, it features layered violin “riffing” that furiously blazes — rolling, rising, and falling. The vocals are also inflamed, caustic and cutting.
The feverish bowing creates rapidly swirling sensations that are mystic and mesmerizing, flowing in waves but sparked by shrill frenzies in the sonic stratosphere, and there’s something distinctive about the melodies that also conjures visions of the New Mexico region where the caverns are located.
The video lets us see Vileinist performing the violin, bowing and plucking it, and howling the vocals:
Tesuque will be released on February 20th, and will be available for streaming on Spotify, YouTube Music, and other major platforms. To pre-order the album and to follow Ferndom, check the links below (and we’ve also included a stream of the album’s first single following the links).
https://vileinist.bandcamp.com/album/tesuque
https://www.instagram.com/vileinist
https://linktr.ee/vileinist