Dense and Bludgeoning: The Infernal Sea - The Great Mortality (2016)

Bandcamp: https://theinfernalsea.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theinfernalsea/?fref=ts

I remember seeing The Infernal Sea maybe two years ago; I had gone in blind and wasn't sure what to expect when they took to the stage, hoods-up, donning plague doctor masks, their backs to their crowd and the lights dimmed. What followed was a gritty, abrasive and unrelenting sound that cast the audience into a sickening trance. At their core the The Infernal Sea are straight-forwardly black-metal with their already deadly attack tipped with poisonous elements of crust and grind. It was a full-throttle, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners sort of approach that was inherently more evil than a lot of corpse-paint clad exhibitionists. Most importantly, however, is that the band managed to mesh that abstract notion of  'atmosphere' with riffs and aggression. 

The Great Mortality is dense and bludgeoning, its pace of attack at full-throttle from the very beginning. In a sense it reminded me initially of a more sulfurous and smog-filled Absu with its overwhelming yet seemingly well-organised chaos. Spurts of melody mixed with clouds of ethereal eeriness do manage to rise to the surface occasionally, clashing against the constant black-metal attack; in 'The Bearer', for example, the wisp sound of a flute or pipe of sorts, together with clean vocals, emerge - Anaal Nathrakh-esque - from the maelstrom. The song transitions into a passage of  industrial noise as a solemn guitar atop of equally solemn drums,  layered with violins (one thing I certainly not expect to hear) haunts the mid-section of the eight-minute song. This rather unexpected change in pace and tone works nicely; the progression from such dense brutality into  subdued melancholy is a satisfying moment of rest-bite. At six minutes and 30 seconds the song emerges from pensive gloom into a whirlwind of atmospheric tremolo picking, pumping bass and machine-like drumming.

Dean Lettice's vocals - though largely uniform - are sickening throughout: high-pitched, abrasive, and anguished, they are the cries of a man forced to watch the new Ghostbusters movie on repeat for a thousand years. Occasionally they dwell lower in the register - croaking and tormented - but on the whole a constant blanket of sharpness stabs and prods through the mix, often accompanied by a slightly deeper backing vocal that serves to fatten the already full-bodied sound.

I'm surprised - in a pleasant 'just found a fiver on the bottom of my shoe' sort of way - by the variety of sounds in The Great Mortality; simultaneously I'm impressed by the the core black-metal intensity: it's pessimistic, haunting, throbbing with energy and most importantly rammed with good riffs and interesting progressions. The unholy trinity of an album of this sort for me is riffs, atmosphere and flow: The Great Mortality achieves all three. 'Pestmeester', the fifth track, opens with a mid-paced crusty onslaught that is lightly caressed with ghostly chantings and moments of unorthodox disharmony akin to the equally unorthodox approach of French weirdos Deathspell Omega and Spektr. 'Plague Herald' is similar, it's tempo even steadier with traces of, what to me, sounds like a sort of of evil hardcore-punk groove that demands to be headbanged to. The final track, 'Brethren of the Cross', opens with a deluge of hazy guitars before settling down into a more intricate and steady ritual. It really is captivating riff after captivating riff, enhanced by truly pained vocals and solid and dynamic bass lines; the drumming is just sort of there doing its thing, nothing out of the ordinary, but too distractedly abhorrent either. The album as a whole is nothing totally bizarre or original, it's not going to open up your mind to an alternate reality that you didn't know existed, but it will certainly rejuvenate that evil alter-ego - that little black-metal gremlin - that we know exists somewhere in the corner of our brain, nestled comfortably between daily worries and anxieties.

Part Deathspell Omega, part Darkthrone, part Abigor: an unholy trinity channeled, to great effect, into The Great Mortality. It's a richly textured and  has many moments worth revisiting. The Infernal Sea are an integral part of an  interesting and diverse British black-metal scene. Over the last few years many British bands have solidified themselves on the international stage and the diversity of British bands (Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone, A Forest of Stars, Fen, Saor, Voices, Old Corpse Road, Ninkharsag, The Meads of Asphodel, Anaal Nathrakh and many others I've not enough room or patience to list) is incredibly encouraging. The Infernal Sea are one such band carrying the plague-infested banners of the British scene to great heights, and long may it continue.

Unsettling Disembodied Ambiance: Spektr - The Art To Disappear (2016)

It's fitting that France - the symbolic centre of western free-thinking and experimentation - keeps churning out some of the most unconventional and exciting extreme metal. Spektr are one such band with their use  of unsettling industrial ambiance that echoes against walls dripping with sharp and detailed black-metal aggression and atmosphere. The strength of The Art To Disappear comes from its ability to merge the sparse and cloying unnatural qualities with a forthright black-metal fury. To quote from their Bandcamp page:

 'SPEKTR is a myserious French Black Metal duo, known for their experimental and mind-altering approach to extreme music.

The band takes delight in delivering an infinitely dark, at times psychotic aura, and transmuting the Black Metal reins into a loose form. Shrouded in a veil of vocalless, industrial and ambient-infected secrecy, the duo's music stands as a metaphore for a trip into the unconfortable uknown.'

The Art to Disappear is entirely instrumental with the odd spoken-word sample drifting in from the dark. On the whole the album relies on a rich array of unconventional sounds and musical progressions. It's an album that demands complete attention otherwise it will wash away in to the background; in my opinion this is not a weakness, it has lots of subtleties that slither with a quiet assurance, subtleties that collide with spurts of furious black-metal noise. 

The ambient sections are regular and haunting; disembodied spoken word sections crawl from churning industrial noises. 'Kill Again', for example, is a nightmarish interlude made up of sharp synthetic noises and glitching pockets of vocals that repeat and throb. The ambient passages really do create a sense of unease. 'The Day Will Definitely Come' begins with a hollow distant sound before a robotic grating scrapes through; at 2.24 it stops, drowned by a low two-tone buzzing sound which is soon drowned by piston-fast double-bass drumming. There is a lot going on, a lot of stopping-and-starting, frequent changes in sound and speed; it does work to create an unsettling and unstable environment, and although it may annoy some, I think its fragmented quality is an interesting and powerful tool. There is a fine line between complete disconnection between sections, but The Art To Disappear manages to maintain a thin sense of fluidity that spawns from the repetition of particular sounds, tropes and riffs - brief some may be - that reoccur throughout.

Riff-wise the album is very interesting. Dissonant, almost toneless, feedback and echoing makes way for semi-conventional riffing. The guitars in 'Through the Darkness of Future Past', similar to recent Inquisition, have a wavering vibrato; 'From the Terrifying to the Fascinating' has a Deathspell Omega feel riff-wise - atonal, occasionally spastic - before completely transcending the realms of extreme-metal. The song morphs in to down-tempo electronic section reminiscent of  Massive Attack's hypnotic trip-hop. Angular riffs storm in again, merged with what sounds like giant industrial bellows expelling air. 

The ten-minute closing track, 'The Art to Disappear', is what it all seems to have built up to. It begins with flowing jazz-like solo drumming and psychedelic reverberations much like the dark tones of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Enzemble. The guitars and bass come in at 1.25 as cymbals crash in a mid-paced groove and as the bass throbs. The drumming grows more frenetic as the song enters its black-thrash phase, they have a synthetic industrial quality and like a frantic press they pummel holes through the intense spurts of the album. The riffs remind me a lot of Blut Aus Nord's sound on Memoira Vetusta, in that it has a similar melodic diversity and atmospheric scope. At 4.30 the song goes silent as a voice crackles above a drum groove, saying: 'we have seen illusion and reality begin to overlap and fuse. The line between them begins to disappear'.

The whole thing is a surreal trip, a dreamlike out-of-body experience where nothing seems natural or real, where nothing is solid and definite; it's a diverse and richly textured sci-fi horror world where consciousness seems to have detached from the body. The album fades out to nothing as the voice continues to glitch and fragment and the drums stutter, it all seems a culmination to the process of disappearing. The Art To Disappear is an ambitious album that has been meticulously arranged and executed.

Bandcamp: https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-art-to-disappear

Vast Oceanic Melodies: Solifvgae - Avenoir (2016)

Bandcamp: https://solifvgae.bandcamp.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uuzqhsdtu-xkY1HYgu-sQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solifvgae/?fref=ts

Avenoir is 'the desire that memory could flow backward'. Avenoir the album, the debut release by Brazilians Solifvgae, is one of longing and loss, looking backwards only to be swallowed and sunk by the miseries of memory; the lyrics of 'Undertow': 'farewell my father, I’m heading out to search for answers into the deep. the vast unknown awaits me, my new destiny', are shrieked with an anguish that overlays an intense spurt of abrasive dissonance: whirling guitars build in scope to a melodic intensity, the bass - extremely loud in the mix - punches its way through like a clogged heart, and the drums are typical in their black-metal mechanical pounding. But Avenoir is also a very tender album: it opens with a sea hissing and rumbling, building in volume, as footsteps crunch their way in to the water to be swallowed by the sea; birds chirp, waves lap calmly and a lonely guitar rings with soft angelic ambient sounds as 'Undertow', the second track, begins. The whole thing has a cold static edge but there is a warmth residing just underneath the surface. Subtle yet powerful melodies flows like hot springs beneath a crackling ice-sharp black metal crust. On the whole the production is not clean sounding, but this is not to the albums detriment. The sound comes across as natural and unforced. 

The vocals throughout are diverse and powerful: putrid, steaming black metal snarls that remind me of Inquisition or Enslaved are mixed up with the occasional deep cavernous guttural. But the riffs and the atmosphere in general are the most accomplished feature of Avenoir, In 'Undertow' the riffs transcend, moving from loud to calm, unwinding echoing through the mix as the bass weaves its way around shards black-metal. 

The leads in 'Fullheart' are particularly striking but the bass in particular holds a great power: it's ominous and pounding, the heart-beat of the songs, stomping through the musical depths like a spectre shackled. At five minutes the drums rupture furiously, a barrage of noise rushing in before a wind-blast abrasiveness sweeps in. There is a striking yet simple solo at 6.40 which leads to a powerful ending with the bass strutting around and an angelic ambiance floating through the surf. The entire thing is a smothering blanket of atmosphere. 

'Submerge//Emerge' is 2 minutes 48 seconds of ambiance, the sound of some mystical aura rising and flowing as exotic sounding animals call from the dying sky. A lot of these bittersweet and  cloying atmospheric  interludes and passages remind me very much of the sounds on Danish depressive-doom icons Saturnus's Paradise Belongs To You album. Like that album, the ambiance flows nicely and brings it all together without seeming forced or jarring. 

'Pathway' picks up the pace, waves crashing with more menace, washing memories away. It's filtered with melodic touches and jumpy stop-start riffing. It is - I suppose - the most 'fun' track of the album, although at three minutes it shifts in tone; it slows and becomes more menacing, deep gutturals rise from the deep and darkness seeps. 'Ocean (As Elusive Memories)', the final song - on an album that I wish was a bit longer - begins with a foreboding grumbling before exploding into life with melodic death riffs, bellowing gutturals and an aggressive intensity. At  four minutes 35 seconds there is another incredible sounding riff - it reminds me of the epic melodic leads in Winterfylleth's 'A Thousand Winters' - that resonates like the sound of a siren. The song has that rich, vast, cosmic scope of sound and atmosphere that I loved so much in Mare Cognitum's Phobos Monolith. It's a fitting conclusion to a very good album.

This album has come out of nowhere really - I was scrolling through bandcamp and spotted the striking album art work - yet I find listening to it once through, then playing it from the start, not something I've done since  Panopticon's Roads To The North. It has so many memorable moments, such a great atmosphere and aesthetic and, despite not the greatest of productions, a real edge to it. For a debut release I'm incredibly impressed and really look forward to seeing how their sound evolves. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Mystical Melancholy: Wildernessking - Mystical Future (2016)

Bandcamp: http://wildernessking.bandcamp.com/album/mystical-future
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Wildernessking
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvN9kk42WyQ2AjlG3Zevd1g

Spectral figures emerge from the sea, waves as white horses, reaching forests thick with memory; to the top of mountains where voices echo from the past, where the black oceans sit in the distance - a swallowing void;  from the mountains down to the rivers where voices sing and an ethereal air clashes with the cold unruliness of its flow, a river that drowns sanity and consumes dreams, a nature unforgiving to man.  Mystical Future is not your typical frost-bitten corpse-ridden barren black-metal snore-fest, instead it carries a personal struggle and a vulnerability cloaked in mystical longing and human suffering. Mystical Future is an honest and powerful album and it is in Wildernessking's ability to fuse explosive energy and aggression with somber meditations and sadness that is this albums greatest achievement.

Mystical Future has the hazy warmth of Lantlos' Melting Sun and the sweeping, vast melodic soundscapes of Panopticon and Fall of Rauros. There is an extreme-metal core here that is layered with influences from the vast musical spectrum - post-rock, shoe-gaze, ambient, progressive - but Mystical Future feeds off the dissonance and abrasiveness of black-metal and dwells in the vast cosmic realms of atmospheric black-metal. It maybe lacks a misanthropy inherent in your typical black metal as the band come across as more human and less cold: they're not consumed by the flaming inferno of self-hatred and misanthropy that so many conventional bands hold close. Wildernessking are more concerned with human issues: personal loss, self-reflection, longing, and existential fears.

Atmosphere and feeling smokes from every corner of Mystical Future. The guitars melt in to one another and reverberate throughout, the drums crash with a tenderness and the vocals, high-pitched and floating like fog, permeate through the drifting tenderness and abrasive anger to great effect. There is a beautiful solo in the opening track that cuts through the music with a twinkling poignancy counterbalanced by the piercing cries of vocalist and bassist Keenan Oates. The bass sings throughout the record carrying, like veins, the energy and life-force of much of the album. The drumming throughout the record is also powerful - the snares are quite audible, but it's a pleasant sound - particularly towards the end of the final song, 'If You Leave', where they gallop in to the mystical future with textured force.

There are well thought out riffs and transitions throughout; 'I Will Go To Your Tomb' opens with intense double-bass drumming, melodic tremolo riffing, sharp screams and layered leads before clawing to a steadier rhythm as a darker atmosphere siphons its way in to the song from the stars. The song picks up again as drums hasten and vocals become more maniacal, guttural and evil. The song progressions are captivating, layers and elements are added and taken away to great effect, it's not just a wall of sound, everything seems carefully plotted and positioned.

'To Transcend' is a reflective and poignant instrumental track that attempts to solidify the atmosphere Wildernessking are trying to create. It's not too long, it's interesting enough in that it's not purely ambient: bass, drums and vocals faintly waltz in a dirge-like pattern, leading up to 'With Arms Like Wands', another intense and cavernous eight-minute journey. The black-metal side of things picks up here with incessant dissonance grating from the get-go, before slowing down with the leads harmonising together. I really love the leads in this album, I get a real Fall of Rauros vibe from them and that's a really great thing.

'If You Leave' opens cautiously, it's the last track and at 13-minutes something vast is expected. Atmosphere drips from every corner as female clean vocals - in the same vein as Chelsea Wolfe - fade in and ring atop of floating reverb-drenched guitars. The gruff hush of vocals intercedes and the song builds layer upon layer, bitter melancholy on top of bitter melancholy, toppling as the bass drumming intensifies.  It does feel that, after being stripped bare, with nothing left to give, the album fades into the setting sun, sizzling off mountainsides, steam rising, glistening into the night. It's a satisfying closure to a powerful album.

I knew that I'd like this album based off the tracks I had heard a few weeks prior and I haven't been disappointed. This album has everything I like in atmospheric black-metal: it's not overly reliant on external sounds to create atmosphere, instrumentation is used with a particularity and a diversity that is so much more powerful than the sound of birds chirping or flat violins played from a keyboard. It's top-of-the-range atmospheric black-metal from the most unlikely of places (Cape Town, South Africa) and I'm sure Wildernessking will continue to create powerful music like this for a long time to come.

Rating: 8.75/10

Album Review: Borknagar - Winter Thrice (2016)

Not many bands do majestic and sweeping melodies as well as Borknagar; there's a real sense of grandeur, of mystical heroism and spiritual power, in many of the songs on Winter Thrice. It's a richly textured album with a lot going on. The first four tracks are exceptional; they're unpredictable and beautifully arranged, each song has its own fingerprint and own path to tread. It all falls under the theme of winter: groaning frost and eternal blizzards, the rhymes of mountains and ice draped rocks; it's a harsh yet harmonious landscape and, as in 'Panorama', 'Everything grows, Everything Dies.' Erosive black-metal collides with soaring folk-melodies, the best songs on this album are those that waltz between intense spurts of black-metal and melodious clean passages inlaid with tender keyboards, harmonious vocals and acoustic caressing. Occasionally, as in 'When Chaos Calls', the two worlds combine, one world flows in to the other, and this is when this album is at its best, when these tender melodies merge with abrasive shrieks and pounding drums.

The two pre-released tracks that open the album are incredible songs that lift the album to the summit of frost-topped Norwegian mountains from the get go, it's hard to top such a great opening and the rest of the album attempts to break free from its mountainous shadow. They may have been more powerful placed elsewhere in the album, as a centre piece perhaps, or as a mighty culmination at the end.

The clean vocals in 'Winter Thrice' are fantastic; the rotation of vocalists works perfectly, each singer has a certain tone that reacts with the others and the song so well: Lazare has a soft melodious voice that seems to long for something, Vortex has a powerful idiosyncratic whoop, more fierce, Garm - of Ulver - comes in with a more depressive drawl before Vintersorg's shrieks infiltrate from the external cold. I like clean vocals when done right, and Borknagar are masterful.

Some songs fall a bit flat in comparison, the intensity and the diversity isn't kept up, 'Noculent' is rather bland with its folk hard-rock conventionality, but it leads in to the pummeling snow-blast opening of 'Terminus', There is a strong progressive element to this album. 'Terminus' and 'Panorama' are prime examples of this with modulated keyboard sounds not far from something by Yes. 'Panorama' is different and playful, it reminds me of Ihsahn or Solefald, it does seem Lazare - founding member of Solefald - had a much greater role in this album. ICS Vortex isn't as prominent, which is a shame.

The second half of the album, in comparison to the first, isn't as instantly memorable, there were no sections that hooked me like 'Rhymes of the Mountain' and 'Winter Thrice' did. It's a solid record all together, but it could have been so much more. It's certainly on par with Urd, in my opinion. They're consistently great and because of this so much is expected of them. 

Rating: 7.5/10

New Song: Oranssi Pazuzu - Hypnotisoitu Viharukous

20 Buck Spin are streaming the fourth track from the upcoming Oranssi Pazuzu album Värähtelijä (pronounced 'vagina') set for release on the 26th of February; you can find the song here.

I've been pretty excited about the album since it was announced last year and this new song has intensified that excitement.

This quote from Metal Archive pretty much sums up the dual nature of the band: 'The band's motto is "Oranssi Pazuzu makes music that invites all the arsonists and smokers to hold hands." It's a mix of psychedelic experimentation and hard-edged black metal.

'Hypnotisoitu Viharukous' is a hypnotic track opening with a doomy, atmospheric noise before rupturing into excellent, no nonsense, riff based black metal;  keyboards and synth sounds - high in the mix - screech and throb over the riffs as maniacal vocals grate. The bass takes to the front as the song spirals into its mystical conclusion as chiming flute sounding synths swirl. 

At four-minutes - after a reasonably measured respite - an isolated riff opens a vortex of swirling sound: drums, guitars, synths, keyboard, and shrieks all in one. I really think this album could live up to the expectation. 

Album Review: Abbath - Abbath (2016)

Guitar World are streaming the Abbath album here. I've given it a few listens, taken it apart and basked in its fury! The album is scheduled for released on the 22nd of this month.

Frost, ice, winter, and death: black metal for the ice hearted. Abbath's self-titled album is pretty straightforward: melodic thrashy riffs; a barrage of whirlwind sound; blasting drums. Yet, this conventionality is it's strongest and most powerful attribute; Abbath knows melody and the riff like the back of his frostbitten hand and years of writing has only honed the ice-precise structure of this album. 

The first track, 'To War!', got me really excited, its sound a chaotic rampage of speedy riffs and snappy snarls, its intense barrage of sound like something from an Absu record, everything at breakneck speed. The drumming on this song and this album as a whole is one of its best features: Creature - also known as Kevin Foley of grind/death band Benighted - offers much more diversity and aggression than your conventional blast-beat repetitive format. With grind and much brutal death relying on nuanced and varied drumming, the drums here feels much more textured than your typical black-metal formula.

There is enough variety here to keep a listener interested: tempo changes and an acoustic interlude in the second track 'Winterbane'; heraldic trumpets and guitar solos in 'Ashes of the Damned'; vocals are more tortured, strained, and snarling vocals in 'Count the Dead'; 'Root of the Dead' is more plodding in pace, even groovy with the bass is jumping about like a lead - in fact the bass is really interesting throughout - King knows his stuff. This is an Abbath album but Abbath doesn't steal the spotlight one bit.

What made Immortal and I so popular were the riffs. And here there are riffs aplenty; they're persistently engrossing and consistently varied. What I like most is the intensity of the tracks here; there is a real thrash/speed energy that underpins the whole thing, and it doesn't lack heaviness thanks to the drumming. I think working with a new - or partly new - band members and maybe not feeling the weight of expectation that a new Immortal record would have had - has give Abbath an icy blast of creative rejuvenation, and although this is not at all groundbreaking or left-of-field, it's fun and thrashy, intense and lively, and there are some evil solos to!  It owes a lot to that playful-buzz and excitement that the best thrash albums give, and it maintains that trademark, cartoonish corpse-paint and ice aesthetic. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Cavernous Whirlwind Atmosphere: Cruda Sorte - Nekrolog

The sky turns to ash and a noise ruptures from a deep black cloud that hangs just below the ground. A rumble and a lowering blocks out natural light. Tree roots rip, trees are picked up and trees are swallowed up by a swirling haze of sky and lightening. Roaring and throbbing with maniacal violence, the skies mouth gnaws away at the earth, stripping it down to a bony carcass. Dust and dry mud withers as lightening whiplashes and scolds the surface. Quivering: the earth bleeds and moans as its pores seep clay. The oceans ignore the moon's power and flee - retreating into caves and mountains. But mountains implode and craters  eat villages. An eye breaks through the cloud, its sulfurous pupil pours oil tears and drowns the land with a molten surf that melts cities. A hand reaches out and cups the earth, it closes and crushes the earth to a marble. Panning out: the figure places the shrunken, withered earth into a pocket with many others like it. Clattering against the others: a collection. On to the next planet, cruising the cosmic boundlessness with a reckless freedom, adding planets to his pockets like acorns to a basket.

Cruda Sorte are ominous and foreboding. Formed in Berlin in 2005 they play a tortured and intense black metal; raw, vulnerable howls fade into the swirling maelstrom of textured, almost orchestra like, guitar sounds and asteroid-heavy drumming.  'Necrologia', a track off their second album - Nekrolog - which was released on New Year's Day. conveys 'Cruda Sorte', Italian for 'cruel destiny', with their hopeless sounding intensity, reminiscent of fellow German's Bethlehem and  the Swedish Shining.  The track succeeds in two ways: it's intensely heavy, instrument lead black metal with an an ambient, atmospheric undertone, and it works to great effect. It's a vast, vibrating, sinew shattering song that channels slow, cavernous doom sentiments with a pummeling energy. Cruda Sorte are no frills, what they lack in aesthetic flamboyancy they make up for in their intense, well-constructed, captivating music.

Up-and-Coming: Wildernessking

Is this the real life? Is this just black metal fantasy? Caught in a landslide. No escape from Cascadian comparison...

The Cascadian mountains stretch to Cape Town, South Africa in the form of Wildernessking's dreamy, melodic yet hard-edged black metal with a lyrical focus on natural mysticism akin to that of Cascadian black metallers bands Wolves in the Throne Room and Skogen. 

Their first album - 'The Writing of Gods in the Sand' - was released in 2012 and their new album - 'Mystical Future' - is scheduled for release on the 29th of January 2016. Exploring similar post-black meal melodies, harmonies and progressions as Panopticon, Alcest and Deafheaven, Wildernessking play a with a maturity beyond their years. This is honest and well-thought out music and it's nice to see the influence of extreme metal spreading to all corners of the world.

Bandcamp: http://wildernessking.bandcamp.com/album/mystical-future
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Wildernessking

The Wonderful and Weird: The Horn

Band: The Horn

Album: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead Volume Fifteen

Released: 1st January 2016

Location: Australia

Style: Pure Egyptian Occult Space Metal (self-dubbed)

For fans of: Septicflesh, Darkspace, Elysian Blaze, Gnaw Their Tongues, Leviathan, Mare Cognitum

The Horn is an eccentric and mysterious industrial black metal project based in Australia, self-dubbed by sole member ‘A D MacHine’ as ‘Pure Ancient Occult Egyptian Space Metal’, which seeks to set the whole of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to music. The Horn’s fifteenth album – released this week and, unexpectedly, titled ‘The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead Volume Fifteen’ – is engrossing in its mix of choral and orchestral ambience and pummeling unorthodox black metal. This is a well thought out amalgamation of atmosphere, drone and doomy symphony without losing hold of an extrememetal dissonance.

                                                                          

The opening track – ‘Spell 9’ – opens with instantaneous black metal fury, a full and powerful production gut punches from the very get go. This is not indicative of the album as a whole - following this jarring introduction we're sent into the weird world of The Horn where two worlds collide: the ancient mystical essence of ancient Egypt and the desolate unknowing void of space.

The vocals are of particular interest and vary throughout: wispy, croaked, strangled snarls float and sting and regularly seep into a whirling cacophony; spoken vocals modulated and godlike break through and deep guttural vocals rumble.  Lyrics taken from R.O. Faulkner’s translations of the Book of the Dead ruminate throughout – esoteric incantations, mystical and magical spells of the afterlife and ritualistic chanting repeats throughout. 

The soundscape is intricately composed; all sorts of percussive instrumentation has been used to great effect: mandolins, spring drums, bells, shakers, flutes, arghuls and violins seep into a vast extreme metal soundscape that attempts to foot itself in both western and eastern musical traditions which reminds me of more recent Septicflesh, although I find this less forced and more subtle in its implementation. 

The album’s strongest track – ‘Hymn to Osiris – is a mesmeric combination of atmospheric ambience and extreme metal. Following two minutes of ambient calm, evil breaks through again; interesting riffage and driving drums explode into action as orchestral and choir drones flow in the background. At seven minutes all comes to a standstill as schizophrenic stringed sounds fluctuate until earthquake heavy funeral-doom riffs and middle-to-high pitched wispy snarls along with spoken word readings homages to Osiris and the gates of the netherworld layer to end the song: it is a genuinely exciting and epic, reminding me of the expansive and immersive music of bands like Spectral Lore, Mare Cognitum and Progenie Terrestre Pura. There’s a lot to take in throughout the album and it would be wrong to knock such an ambition and thoughtfulness, but at times I wish there was more of a focus on the black metal side of things over the the more long winded drone-ambient passages - with a one hour and four minute run length it can be difficult to be attentive for so long - but this is a minor nit-pick and perhaps, for an album of this scope, such a change in focus would detract from the atmosphere the album creates as a whole.

This is an incredibly inventive album that tries to create something that runs against the grain. Listen to this with good headphones or speakers and appreciate each little nuance and progression that adds to the creation of an unsettling, mysterious atmosphere.

Bandcamp: http://ancientegyptianhorn.bandcamp.com/album/volume-fifteen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ancientegyptianhorn/