In the long hours of night when the daylight will not come, when the ghosts of the past and the devils of the present toy with your sanity and dissect your sense of self and self respect… when the first razor cut, made with trembling hand, sends a shocking stream of crimson crawling sluggishly across the sickly pale white of your sun-starved skin… when there is no comfort to be found and you are lost in a shadowed labyrinth of torment and grief, sinking in a morass of blood and tears… on a night like this there is no salvation in the bottle or the needle. There is no god in heaven and no fallen angel in hell. There is only the emptiness that cannot be filled and the unbearable loneliness that gnaws at your soul. And the unshakeable certainty that there is no way out.

As album preambles go, that one is a particularly soul-shuddering thing to read. It is also an entirely fitting encapsulation of Raw Illumination, an album released last fall by Finland’s Grave With A View — not only the album’s bleak emotional inspiration but also the wretchedness, ruin, and rage of the musical experience itself.

The Dusktone label, which released the album, offered their own preview: Continue reading »