Umbra Nihil - The Borderland Rituals

This album caught me as a surprise, really. Because, admit it, Umbra Nihil used to suck. Their side of the split with Aarni was a disaster – a bunch of half-done demos, a whooping display of MIDI drums, bad vocals, lack of composition. 2005′s Gnoia was an improvement. At least the songs were more or less finished on it, not just a mass of raw ideas and sketches. Instrumentation became more creative, sound and recording quality turned out to be alright. But still, it’s a lame effort. The only, err, ‘selling point’ on Gnoia is “The Dreams in the Witch-house”, and more precisely, the movement in the middle, with the chanting, solos, and general sluggish progginess.

Then, BANG! the raw mix of “Welcome to the Borderland” appeared on their myspace and I was quite surprised by it… Gone were the awful death-doom-wannabe allures, the awful guitar tone. No more of that pitch-shifted shite growl. Their place was taken over by the almighty 70′s. And you can feel the Umbra Nihilists just love prog. The whole Borderland Rituals album consists of deconstruction, quotes, stylizations… plus some great, memorable moments that really get stuck in your head. E.g. th chorus in “Open the Gate”. The lyrics and the singing are cheesy and tounge-in-cheek.

Children of the mountain
in their sacred grove
Practice ancient magic
to wake up their god…

Come on, this is awesome!

So yeah, I can’t stress enough how happy I am with this new direction Umbra Nihil have taken with The Borderland Rituals. Earlier the only reason I listened to them was their link to Aarni… Yes, I admit it. Yes, sometimes I only give several chances to certain bands because they are connected to another in someway or another. Umbra Nihil have become an individual entity in my eyes. Good job pleasing me. You may live. Now go and release more macrocosmic prog-doom.

Swamp - Once Upon a Time EP

A bunch of young guys from Moscow.. I saw them opening for Anal Cunt and they really impressed me. Fast, tight, energetic, good riffs, good solos. Apparently, the thematic range covers swamps and some more swamps. Occasional monsters and chainsaws. The singer kept announcing every song by retelling its moral and content: “this next song is called ‘Oxygen Hunger’… It’s about a man who drowned in the swamp ROAR!”, “This is an untitled song. But it’s also about the swamp. Let’s call it ROAAAAR!!”. So they weren’t all that serious.

SWAMP’s a young band but they already managed to perform along with Napalm Death, Decapitated, etc. Visit theirSpace. They released a free EP, Once Upon a Time recently, it can be found here. Seven swampy-foggy black/grind hybrid songs. The first one, ‘The Fog’ is sorta an atmospheric intro, you know, swamp, frogs and smoke-machines, muffled roars and chainsaws. Your everyday trip through that abandoned park you shouldn’t really go to. Then the grinds kick in with ‘Chainsaw Journey’. A pit-pleaser, with a very nice rhythm section (judging by his appearance, the drummer is approximately 17). By the way, here‘s a pretty decent video of it. The rest of the album follows in basically the same manner. I can’t make out the lyrics (or maybe I can?? I always think he growls “drunk soldiers” somewhere in ‘Son of Desert’, I guess). There are some good fast changes in the songs, making them slightly more complex, more interesting. Decent musicianship. And surprisingly good production!

In my review about Be Persecuted’s I.I I wrote that you can’t tell them being Chinese strictly from their music. Well, the same goes for SWAMP too. The good side of this: SWAMP’s a potential, competent band when compared to similar non-Russian acts. The bad (not-so-good) side: nothing revolutionary. They pay their tribute (‘Spheres of Madness’), bow their head, but don’t extend any boundaries. On the other hand.. they are young. And quite good at what they are doing.

Fuck, you’re not obliged to be revolutionary in music. That’s it. Just.. damn. This is a bit hard. I’m trying to be fuckin’ objective here!! ROAR! Okay. Subjective opinion time: they might not be revolutionary, but they kick ass. See ya.

Be Persecuted - I.I

China has music. I have a Chinese neighbour, he’s a nice guy but his musical taste is bug-ugly. Not in that sludge-death-swamp bug-ugly way, more along that certain boybandish line. Both in Chinese and foreign music. I promised to burn a disc for him with good music (I have no idea, what to include). The thing is, appearently China has black metal. There are at least two labels (Pest Productions and Funeral Moonlight Productions). Their enthusiasm is cute: “Pest Productions is a Black Metal label/distribution found in May of 2006 and being located in Jiangxi, China. The motivation of this project was the feelings that Black Metal and any other types of dark art bring to us. Pest Productions will be dedicated to supporting Chinese Black Metal scene in the long run by releasing the stuff for those dark artists with the same ideology on audio format. Please contact us if we are on the same way… Interested bands should contact me for the info you need by email. Normally no address will be revealed for fucking snail mail!”

Do I sound racist? Talking about cute enthusiasm of the Chinese as if they were puppy doggies.. Whatever. It IS cutely enthusiastic.

Fun fact: Be Persecuted’s nationality brings nothing different to the music. It’s depressive black metal. They began their glorious career at China’s very own Pest Productions with a demo but ended up releasing the debut full-length at No Colours Records. I guess No Colours needed somebody colourful to brighten up the NSBM palette?
Okay, I’m being a bit of a hypocrite now. Slippery slope, slippery slope, little bar of soap.

What do we have on the depressive black metal checklist? Repetitive riffs – check. High-pitched shrieks – check. Lo-fi production – check. Now, repetitiveness can mean a) unearthly boredom, or b) hypnotic effect. Be Persecuted mostly use said gimmick to achieve the second effect. Take the best song, ‘Resolve Weakly Fails’, as an example. 5 fuckin’ minutes of the same riff – you hum it next day in public transport.
But what really sucks on this album is the interludes or what the fucks. Basically, either at the end or at the beginning of the song they play a riff which is totally unrelated to the rest. They play it a few times (a few dozen. Hundred). Why?? They try to sound artistic with them. Little problem: they SUCK at playing their instruments. Which is fine when they are pumping the good riffs.

Still, it shows how far you can get without actually being able to play: relative success and a relatively good album.

Chapel of Ghouls - Prays to Nothingness

These guys were so underground back in 1989 that no album cover exists. They reformed as Zelda, then as Belketre, they are one of the most prominent members of the beknown French Black Legions (Les Légions Noires, LLN). If thou are not trained in the black metal lore, you might not get the ultimate kvltness of this whole LLN-thing. Now, only one thing is kvlter than being LLN — being pre-LLN. Proto-LLN. Chapel of Ghouls, ftw.

In comparassion with latter works, Prays to Nothingness showcases a far cleaner (if such word can be applied to any raw black metal), more complex sound. Guitar solos. Audible bass and drums. Come on! There isn’t a slightest trace of these to be found on, for example, March to the Black Holocaust. With a little effort you can even make out the lyrics. The vocals are, naturally, shouted and shrieked in the good ol’ black metal style. The riffs are crunchy. At some point or another the listener might get the impression of listening to some lo-fi punk album. Not punk— crust (more lore! Train yourself with “General Genring 101″).

Standout tracks? Are you kidding? This is utter chaotic mess. Some black metal records turn out to b the ultimate ambient. The same goes for technical death metal. If you get over the “ouch, my ear hurts” phase, it’s harmless and provides almost zero distraction.

It’s 6am and I cannot sleep. I did have two cups of tea, but two cups wouldn’t have such a long-lasting effect. Not even on me. My creative (see also: shitheap) powers are on their peak. Really? Is blogging about shit music the peak of my creativity? I’m trying to get some research done at the same time, reading an  1908 essay on the Tomb of Mausolus (the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus). I stumbled upon old catalogues of the British Museum as well, also from 1908. They bear some kind of a novelty value for me..
It’s because it’s new // It’s new because it’s old
Gatefold.

Eat Rust - Warrior

Only one thing soothes me faster than the earthlings? and it’s my own fuckin’ music. Because it’s perfect. For me. I create the music I really need. Eat Rust’s Warrior (download for free from archive.org) is one of my current favourites.

Eat Rust had an EP called DMD which consisted of silly guitar passages backed up by even sillier drum-software patterns. The last song on the EP was basically the mix of all previous song with an added layer of noise. Warrior followed in the same manner. Added were more singing and a stupid toy recorder or something. The last song, once again, was a mash-up of the rest of the album… With extra toy instrument solos—free jazz, motherfucker. No abstractions here, haha! I’m better than you all, musicians.
I was born in the wrong place and time, though. I feel that my real existene got lost somewhere between Zürich, 1916 and Berlin, 1919. ‘warrior 0′ is the anthology of all the lives born dead in me.

When horses die, they breathe
When grasses die, they wither,
When suns die, they go out,
When people die, they sing songs.

Enough of all these dead people.

Dadaism; sometimes I wanna destroy every fuckin’ thing in the world. Not just the things I hate. Everything. The things I love, the things that make me happy. I wanna destroy myself. If I destroy myself, do I stay in this world? By removing oneself from the world, one destroys the world because the world exists only in one’s perception. The alpha and the omega, nothing before me, nothing after me. Less than nothing.

earthlings? - Earthlings?

‘Nothing’, the first track of this album.
An effective an calculated intro, those first two paragraphs of mine. I’m a self-inducing machine of hatred and fucked-up nerves. It only takes me 15 minutes to myself to flinge myself into total self-loathing furry berzerk or a depressive blacker-than-black dirge.
‘Nothing’, and it’s one of my favourite songs. It soothes me. “Music has charms to soothe the savage beast”. Breast and not beast, by the way. Lines from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. Way to be a snob asshole, man, good job!!

All the reverb.. ahh… seriously, this song is perfect. I can feel my neurotic brain getting back into order. The earthlings? might just be completely serious. At least, they make me want them to be completely serious. I want to travel space and time on my spaceship. My Tardis. With a companion? Yeah, probably. Or alone, completely alone. *knock knock* Who’s there? The Doctor. Doctor Who? The Doctor. Being alone is sometimes good. Sometimes bad. That’s another problem I tend to have. I’m way too fuckin’ objective. I try to be. Yeah, I hate this shitheap, but hey, even a shitheap has right to exist. I love the earthlings?. I honestly want to live like that. Saving up for my spaceship. “On a night as clear as this, you can launch yourself into the sky”. Sturm und Drang. With retro-spaceships. All this romanticism in music. Silence by Henry Fuseli is basically a contemporary DSBM cover art.
Stupid internet resources, cutting down the top of paintings.
Am I a snob?
Yes.

Now, Earthlings? by the earthlings? is as little snobbish as possible. The second half of the album may not be that memorable as the opening, but I still adore it. RIP Fred Drake. RIP Natasha Shneider. I’m still here.

Desiderii Marginis - That Which is Tragic and Timeless

I was serious about giving a try to this other album. So I got my hands on it. It is better. Yeah! Taking into account, that it’s the middle of the night and I’m in a cold room (“no heating for you in September, fuckers”), it’s very-very atmospheric. Some of the pretentiousness is gone. Shouting decapitalised. *snork-snork* Now it’s only industrial! ambient! dark! atmospheric!

What brought all the changes? Where does the wind of change blow from?
Okkkay. I admit, the change is not that radical. The basics stayed the same. Slow compositions with rare accents. Ambience. The Dungeon Master’s favourite. oh, sorry. No, no. Not Dungeon Master. Storryteller. They don’t have DM’s in sophisticated dark-atmospheric verbal improvisative community activities. The addition is a few strums of acoustic guitars; more short sounds, and not just long droning synths. And it really makes a difference. ‘The Love You Find in Hell’ is almost like a neofolk song, clocking over 5 minutes. Percussion-thing (hammer htting anvil), guitar-thing (two chords on an acoustic guitar). Monotonous? Yes. But good. Opening track ‘Worlds Apart’ features the same set-up. Wait. ‘Still life’. Same acoustic strumming, only layered by some murmur bouncing from the left speaker to the right speaker and back.

Aw, man. Almost there, ALMOST! Still, this album is probably better than Deadbeat. It’s nice to sit and read while it’s playing. Mission #1 for ambient accomplished. I understand if the listener wants nothing more from the artist. But an artist being satisfied with the listener using his/her music as a simple background noise??

Desiderii Marginis - Deadbeat

Late Night Reviews with mr. Insomnia!! Hey-hey-hey! I picked an album which has been lying around for some time (on my hard drive, that is), an album I never listened to normally yet but which interests me. Ambient music. What’s the point of it? Music journalists at this stage usually reach for that Brian Eno quote (“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”). I’m not a music journalist – thank God! however.. they do make money. Nah. Details. Whatever. Desiderii Marginis’ Deadbeat fulfils each single point of that definition. Ignorable – check. You can pay attention if you want. But why should you? You are doing something else, you don’t want to concentrate on the music playing. Maybe you are working. Reading. Waiting in an airport. Using an elevator.

Playing Call of Ctulhu, Vampire: the Masquarade or any other horror-themed RPG. Deadbeat creates a certain dark, industrial atmosphere, that’s for sure. But.. damn it, every single sound, every effect is shouting blatantly at you: THIS! IS! SCARY! THIS! IS! DARK! AND! INDUSTRIAL! Clichés. Chiming, haunting bells in the distance, humming generators, all that jazz (sic!).

[my reviews are getting shorter but hoard more and more tags. They are shouting blatantly!!]

It’s perfect, just perfect for a Lovecraftian gaming session. It’s well-made. Stylish. But it’s not music, damn it. Yessss, I’ve said it. I hate that phrase, hate it, hate it.. but what to do. Music is something you try to get into while it tries to get into you as well. Sorta. No. Wait. It’s 3am. Evolution had no effect on me-ah. These reviews are slowly drifting towards the blackholeish-void of Dadaist keyboard-humping. VOID! Desiderii Marginis wants you to believe that the void is near. Right under your fuckin nose. Face the noise. YES! I! AM! EVEN! IMPLENTING! METALLIC! KLINGING! IN! MY! TRACKS! AND! GREGORIAN! CHANTING!

The track ‘Mantrap’ organizes the noises into some nice beats. I kinda enjoy that. A total Dead Cities-era FSOL rip-off, but whatever. Damn, it’s almost the same. Haha, never noticed that earlier. Go cybergoths, the cyberspace is yours. I need something more material. They say Desiderii Marginis’ 2005 release That Which is Tragic and Timeless is different. Let’s see.

Hank Ray - Barbeque of Souls

Hmm, looks like ranting about “abstract traditional music” will become my own hot topic on this blog.. Maybe I should listen to something else? Maybe it’s time to radically change my taste?? I don’t think so. I don’t really have a taste, not in the usual sense of this word. Basically, I love to rant ’bout shit.

Who the heck is Hank Ray? A guy from Berlin. Beware the German, son. They invented.. wait. Hmm. They invented Modern Talking. Okay. Back on topic. Plays country. Punkglamdeathcountry. Been around for a while. Since the 80′s— waaait. I wrote nearly the same an hour ago in that Sol Invictus review. That 80′s, been there done that thing. Hank Ray is somehow the flipside of the same coin. Long live Western culture! He adores and idolises the most rotten, most hideous cancer of the world: America. Eww, cry out the neofolk-folk. Hank Ray, according to his own words, tried to merge his favourite glam-rockers with his favourite country singers. Ziggy Cash and the Undead Banjorapers.

Musically it’s a heap of songs with acoustic guitars, backed up by fuzzy bass/electric guitar. Both fast-paced songs and ballads are present. Damn, once again, I’ll repeat myself: some good tracks and a bunch of fillers. Title track ‘Barbeque of Souls’ rocks, period. ‘Endless Plains of Delirious Lands’ is great as well. But every single song applies basically the same formula. “It worked once, so let’s do it again!” Yeah. Pretty much like traditional country. Yeah, pretty much like traditional folk. But stylised. Filtered. Abstract motherfucker!! The attitudes differ, though. Stating that Hank Ray is “funnier” may sound banal but it makes a point. Sol Invictus is not suffering from a lack of humor either, but.. it’s serious. Very serious, in all aspects. Hank Ray is childish. Lyrically, musically. Ideologically. It’s lighter. Without pretentions? Maybe.

Another similarity. Both Hank Ray and Sol Invictus are the tops of their own little icebergs. There are hundreds of bands exploiting the same formulas, but these two do it good. They at least produce quality music. And I’m not dissing the lo-finess of some bands. God’s my witness, I love lo-fi ♥. By quality I mean a certain amount of originality and individuality.

Now… is it good or bad? To finish the review with something liberal: it’s up to you. Decide. It’s not my aim to teach morals to teh people. But.. really, who said that Hank Ray and Sol Invictus are alternative choices?? Don’t be embarassed to enjoy/like/love/listen both.

Sol Invictus - The Hill of Crosses

So, the first review on rheumatic fever. A late album (2000) by an old band, Sol Invictus. They have been around since the end of the 80′s, riding on the hunch of the mystical-pagan wave. Or maybe even creating said wave, along with bands like Current 93. Talking about bands may not be the best solution. It’s more about certain people. Sol Invictus is Tony Wakeford. Current 93 is David Tibet. Death in June is Douglas P. Everybody played in everybody else’s band, released compilations, albums, manifestos together. They share a few basic checkpoints in their carreer, such as “Nazi”, “not Nazi”, “accused of being a Nazi”, “not Nazi just digs them swastikas”, “not Nazi just objective”, “not Nazi just pagan/religious/digs them ancestors”. I’m using the word “Nazi” as an umbrella-term.. I’m more or less aware of the difference between Nazis, fascists, various followers of even more various totalitarian ideas, etc. I did some research on neopaganism and related movements. I can’t say that I know everything. But I have covered as much aspects as possible for a non-believer/non-follower.

Quite an introduction, huh? That’s the problem with neofolk. Setting the background, clearing the political and ideological plasts takes up.. well.. a lot of space. Now, what’s with the music? Yes, there’s music hidden behind all those solar symbols (you know, swastikas), pseudo-christian imagery and gnosticism. Is it folk music? Yes, it is definately influenced by folk music. But not directly. It could be compared to the so called modern “world music”. The artist takes a pre-filtered, abstract concept of folk music (say, “finger-picked acoustic guitars”), filters it once again, but hopefully adding some of his own ideas, individual flavour. Most “mature” works by neofolk bands feature acoustic guitars with occassional flutes, Pan-flutes, tribal drumming (abstract primitivism.. paganism somehow always gets connected with it). Strings. Repetitious chanting-like vocals. Tony Wakeford’s voice isn’t great bt it’s unique and quite enjoyable. He can’t sing, but this kind of music doesn’t need proper singing. A certain amount of naive primitivity, characteristic of folk music.

The arrangements on The Hill of Crosses are almost neo-classical. Organs, oh, organs. Tremendous amount of organs. The most boring part of the album, in my opinion. They are not out of place, they are just overused. They turn some songs into fillers (e.g. ‘Chime the Day’ and ‘Chime the Night’). I understand that he wants to get the message, whatever it might be, to the listener, but endless organ-drones and spoken poetry is just not the thing he should be going for. In my opinion. Songs like ‘A German Requiem’, ‘December Song’, ‘God Told Me To’ with their simple song-structures are much more effective. They catch your attention. You remember the lyrics, they don’t mix up into a single mass of gods and crosses. But a good album, alltogether. Despite the flaws (some boring/weak tracks), it really grows on you.

I still check out the biography of the artist before downloading a neofolk album, though. Ah, the folly of Western culture!!