Jul 172022
 

 

As you could already deduce from the previous two posts at this site, in recent days I found more than the usual amount of time I could devote to new music. My day job left me alone, or I ignored it, and I shrugged off household chores too. Baseball presented the only serious competition, because a certain team in the Pacific Northwest is on a historic winning streak (and I hope I didn’t just jinx them by mentioning that).

Focusing on black metal for purposes of this column, I settled on one dazzling album, a collection of quite varied “singles” from forthcoming records, and a new video. You’ll also find poetry.

SCARCITY (U.S.)

Scarcity‘s new album Aveilut (a Hebrew word for mourning) is difficult to describe. In part because it’s a single 45-minute composition, and in part because the trip maneuvers and whipsaws us through a spectacular labyrinth, it defies efforts to explain that “this happens, and then that happens, and then this other thing happens”. How tedious that would be, despite the hope that mapping the album would make it easier to comprehend.

Trying to pick out signal moments as illustrations of the music wouldn’t work very well either, because there are so many, and because they dramatically diverge from each other. Continue reading »

Mar 202020
 

 

Settle in. Prepare to lose yourself, to be excavated from the inside out and left in terrible emptiness, with a thousand-yard stare, shivering with the affliction of ghosts.

The song we’re presenting is 32 minutes long, far less than the flight-time to Jupiter’s moons or a journey to the entrance of Hades (either of which might be the source of these sounds), but long enough to sink you deeply into the chilling visions of Noctu, to the point of no return.

The song is “Isolato Da Un Mondo Senza Speranza” — which eerily suits the current day, as its English translation is “Isolated From A World Without Hope”. Continue reading »