Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Transition Towards Silence

Kriegsmaschine (2014) Enemy of Man. No Solace. 46 min.

  
How would you measure ruin?
How would you assess fall?
How would you separate sins when all bear the same mark?
  
When I was advised to give a listen to a band called Kriegsmaschine hailing from Poland there was a certain edge to be overcome, a nagging devil in my head saying 'Dont' waste your time, you'll be just disappointed.' But, still, I decided to oppose the devil and acquired a copy of Enemy of Man.

There's no denying that the devil was playing with a winning hand. Polish black metal have always have a sinister charm of its own, but there's also been a certain shortage of fine Polish black metal since... well, since the 1994 e.h. The glorious year after which a Hitlerian-Lovecraftian apocalypticism was put on the shelf and replaced with a much more family-friendly approach. There was a distinct demand for that, then, if that actually amounted to anything. It didn't, if you ask me. Well, that's not the whole truth, of course, and there's some rather heavy counter-arguments, e.g. Cultes Des Ghoules and MGLA. The last mentioned sharing members with Kriegsmaschine.

That should do for an introduction. Hence, let's bow our heads and follow penitently that faint gleam of bottomless perdition - to ashen havens and to beyond.

Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen? ich heule; aber meine Hilfe ist ferne. Thus opens a slow and anguished descent towards the hell made of pathological and pointless repetition and horrors that lies therein. This hell - our world - in which a genuine metaphysical horizon doesn't exist no more and have been replaced by gross materialism and its even sillier counterpart, that is primitive superstition, doesn't allow for a positive rebellion. It's only the simple-minded and stupid who still entertain illusions of change. Most of them are, of course, nothing but paper tigers living their fantasy lives on the pages of some shitty 'zine. For the rest, for those who are still standing on their feet, such illusions doesn't exist. There's only anguish - and a dire sense of abandonment.

In the Enemy of Man a sense of abandonment seems to haunt every intricate riff, every deliberate rhythm, every harrowing word. It's just there, like a shadow of death which robs even the last bit of joy from life. This sense of abandonment also ties the album to an integrated whole.

As I have already hinted, Enemy of Man is first and foremost an integrated whole. It doesn't have much highlights. Nor does it have any lowlights. But, still, it has a quality of persuasiveness which draws you in and which keeps you in. The music flows forth naturally and with ease, even though this is not 'easy music' in any sense of the term. There's no hurry - and there's no blast beats - which allow compositions to flower into massive sound monuments. Perhaps needless to say, but Enemy of Man is best enjoyed with headphones during twilight hours.

Thus, it seems that the poor ol' devil lost this round. But worry not, he'll get his revenge sooner or later. Should you have your own personal devil in your head, just forget him and his omniscient criticisms. He doesn't know everything - and about modern-day Polish black metal he probably knows nothing at all.

Kriegsmaschine's Facebook page: here.
Kriegsmaschine on Encyclopedia Metallum: here.
No Solace website: here.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

O Easter the Most Peculiar Time

Jumalhämärä (2014) Songless Shores. Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions. 18 min.


Sleep peacefully, brothers
It's warm and cozy
Be at rest, be the offering
Remember to flog your children properly

Bells chime hollow - You are invited! - to be accompanied with voices from afar. An erratic and tribal metal sets in. A feverish nightmare pounding my already fragile psyche. A chthonic voice crawls forth from underneath the cold and moist Finnish soil, and those pale, shadowy figures... covered in blood, smiling. Welcome my sacred brethren of 1931.

Acoustic and electric guitars coil and interwine together like those twin serpents of life and death - red and black, of course - and lead the way to a foggy realm made of ambient hum and chanting choir. Everything seems to be out of place in this realm, and yet a crooked smile still lingers on my face.

Slowly, little by little the chanting choir is drown under a barrage of noise and clutter coming from an unknown source. The rusty dagger - a family treasure of sorts - in my hand comes to life. Pulsating, enticing. The bread and wine of nightmares is laid upon a cold stone, and those howls... Verily, O verily I know what is to be done.

A strange clacking rhythm draws me out of a momentary fall to an inner blackness. In a short while the choir returns, their voices rise towards a starlit sky which is barely visible from these timbered chambers. Such a beauty, such a numinosity! Warm tears run down my blood-stained face... O Easter the most peculiar time!

Coming clean about it, I just cannot write a 'normal album reviews' on Jumalhämärä's releases, and that's a distinct winning point for them if you ask me. Why? Well, basically I differentiate good musick from bad musick by the following maxim; Good musick translates into a graphic and vivid story in my head, while bad musick just doesn't do that. Call me hidebound, naive and simpleton, but I just couldn't give a flying fuck about writing reviews which focus on 'blast beats', 'production values' or 'scene merits'.

Then again, there's most certainly more to the Songless Shores than just being a catalyst for one man's storytelling exercise.

While most of the contemporary black metal allows itself to be used as a vehicle for the 'second religiosity' - usually in a fully unsconscious manner - by accepting an universal and multiculturalist paradigm of the twilight civilization, Jumalhämärä seems to steer in the opposite direction by choosing particular over universal and cultural over cultureless. This provides them an opportunity to dig deep into the soul of Finnish man, which lies dormant under a foreign morass. This - a distinct Finnishness, that is - is a major factor in the Songless Shores, just as it was in their anterior opus Resitaali (2013). Genetically coded black metal, anyone? Well, at least my genetic programming responded in the affirmative.

The previous version of this review - lost once and for all thanks to Google fuckup - had some name-dropping used as a way to provide pointers for those who might be interested in the Songless Shores. Here they are again; Yrjö von Grönhagen, Clandestine Blaze, Hildegard von Bingen and Throbbing Gristle. Use your imagination to figure out how they connect - or if they, actually, connect at all.

Jumalhämärä on Encyclopedia Metallum: here.
Their respective record label: here.