(written by Islander)
I originally made six choices for this column, but as I did yesterday I overslept due to having a bit too much fun last night at a local watering hole. So, I’m rushing now and am forced to leave two of my choices behind — and to cut this introduction short.
As it happens, all of the following four songs were presented through videos, and the first three are especially good.
DIE SÜNDE (Italy)
The first video in today’s collection is a mysterious and ultimately harrowing one. It might seem like a seafarer’s dream, which begins hazily and in expectant solitude but becomes more frighteningly real as seas storm and violently toss the symbolic husk of the protagonist’s ship.
It seems likely that the entire narrative is symbolic, in light of what Die Sünde have written about their new album Effemeridi, which includes the chilling song “Su una rotta d’un mare di perigli” that’s featured in the video:
The explanation beyond the human conception of how deep the roots of our pain are lies in the immobility of human nature in taking refuge from it.
Here is Effemeridi a journey in which we are navigators on the labile balance of our subconscious towards the route dictated by our desires that breaks against the inevitability of life.
And we are shipwrecked in our self and in our fears in search of an answer, a meaning of salvation to finally be able to re-emerge and understand where we ended up, where everything led us to the discovery of a new I.
Like the video, the song itself is both dreamlike and storming, and as mentioned, it’s chilling in all of its changing phases. The vocals have a lot to do with that. They flow seamlessly between ardent but haunting singing, crackling snarls, raging howls, tormented yells, fervent choral voices, and gasping spoken words.
As for what surrounds those voices, Die Sünde deploy dismal guitar harmonies that both ring and growl, as well as vividly rippling tremolo’d melodies that channel despair. They cause the music to swell and expand with symphonic power, to heavily heave in darkness, and to boil and burn. It is every bit as harrowing as it is haunting.
Effemeridi will be released on November 13th by Time To Kill Records.
P.S. According to the band’s M-A page: “‘Die Sünde’ means ‘The Sin’ in German. It is also the title of the most famous painting by the German artist Franz Stuck (1893).” I hadn’t seen that painting before, so I found it — and it’s definitely worth a look (which you can have here).
https://diesuende.bandcamp.com/album/effemeridi
https://www.instagram.com/diesuendeband
https://www.facebook.com/diesuende
THE AEONS TORN (Germany)
I decided to pair Die Sünde’s song and video with “Echoes of the Darkspace” by the German band The Aeons Torn, because it too creates a chilling experience. Here is how press materials describe the subject of the song :
Lyrically, it reflects on the Fermi Paradox: if the universe is so vast and old, why has humanity found no clear sign of intelligent life beyond Earth? Between cosmic horror and scientific thought, “Echoes of the Darkspace” asks what humanity does not know, and whether it truly wants the answer.
The video for the song, which is extremely well-made, includes two figures that can be seen to represent cosmic horror and scientific thought. The encounter between them is frightening, and you can probably guess which one will not survive it.
The music, which could be branded as a fusion of black metal and doom, is also frightening. It lurches and crushes at the pace of funeral doom, with infiltrations of ethereal sound that sizzle and simmer, adding a sense of unearthly mystery and intrigue to an extremely ominous impression. But after a bit of narration which introduces the paradox, the music becomes much more turbulent, and wild cries appear along with bestial snarls.
The music feverishly jolts and heavily crashes, but also seems to wail like eerie transmissions from another dimension, to dismally throb while the drums brutishly clobber and furiously rumble, and to ring out like ghostly funeral bells. It’s the kind of song that could leave even people sweltering in apocalyptic heat chilled to the bone.
“Echoes of the Darkspace” is from an album named Void Artefakkts, which will be released independently on November 27th, digitally and on vinyl.
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/theaeonstorn/echoes-of-the-darkspace
https://www.facebook.com/theaeonstorn/
https://www.instagram.com/theaeonstorn_official/
SERVANT (Germany)
Now we come to the third and final video in this collection. Two performers dominate what you’ll see — Servant vocalist Farago and bloodstained guest vocalist Lethian from the German black metal band Nornír. Their voices, both the fanatical howls and the throat-ripping screams, are furious, and their faces are scary as hell.
The video includes other characters — a feeble old man in a wheelchair who seems unable to speak or to interact with, or perhaps even to recognize, his visitors (presumably his daughter and grand-daughter).
Those images may connect to the meaning of the song “De Profundis” (“from the depths”), though that’s not clear. The lyrics, expressed in the song as a shattering dialogue between the two vocalists, speak of altars destroyed, of beauty gone, of a god in its tomb, and of the need to force open the eye of god and light the flames again. Perhaps the old man in the video is that god who must be awakened?
The song’s fiery musical intensity is undeniable, but so is the emotional power of the melodies. The riffing flows in searing weaves as drums maniacally blast. A trilling guitar harmony vividly whirls. The music reaches expansive scales of towering melodic glory and equally expansive tragedy. It seems to express pain and feelings of longing remembrance above heavily thrumming bass-lines and drums that boom as well as blast.
All in all, “De Profundis” is quite a stirring spectacle. It’s the third single taken from Servant’s upcoming album Lux Ex Inferis, which will be released on October 2nd by AOP Records.
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/lux-ex-inferis
https://www.facebook.com/servantmagick
FLAME (Finland)
Having moved on from two very chilling experiences to one that’s incendiary (but also haunting in its own way), I thought we should stay inflamed for the final selection in this abbreviated roundup. And to do that I’ve added the second single off a new album by the Finnish black metal band Flame.
The song’s name is “Spellfire“, and that turns out to be a meaningful name because the music does sound like a joining together of esoteric spells and a surging wildfire.
At the outset the tumbling drums sound like the onset of a stirring ritual, and around them the music simultaneously moans, whines, and feverishly flickers; in tones both grating and crystalline they create moods of ominous menace and ecstatic possession.
But the song’s real payoff arrives after that overture, when the lead guitar launches into a thrash riff that will get your blood surging right away, even though the drums and bass are backing that vibrantly pulsating riff with slow and steady beats.
The song also includes vicious, fang-bared snarls, elevated melodic fanfares of hellish glory, lead-guitar spasms that continue to sound orgiastic, bursts of double-bass mania, and a resurgence of those ominously moaning and menacing accents and ritualized rumbles from the song’s overture.
“Spellfire” is also highly infectious. It’s from Flame’s third album, Ignis Draconis Daemonicus, which is set for international release on September 25th by the Primitive Reaction label. The album was mixed and mastered by Greg Chandler (of Esoteric) at his Priory Recording Studios in the UK.
https://primitivereaction.bandcamp.com/album/ignis-draconis-daemonicus
https://www.facebook.com/satansflame