Tag Archives: black metal

Wolves Unlike Us – Aaron Weaver of Wolves In The Throne Room

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American Black Metallers Wolves In The Throne Room have always been a band with a far greater commitment to atmospherics and ambiance than their peers, but with fifth album Celestite (Southern Lord) they’ve left Metal behind to fully embrace Electronic ambiance. Aaron Weaver, one half of the core duo, spoke to Ghost Cult about spirituality, striving for perfection and how they’re not ready to turn their back on Metal.

 

Celestite represents a significant change from your previous work, in that the Metal elements have been left behind. Do you consider this an abrupt change or a gradual one, and would you say that your musical direction has altered?

“Musically, the finished result feels very congruent with what we’ve done before and clearly exists in the same universe. It has the same energy to it, the same spirit to it. When I listen to it, I experience the music as a landscape, a soundscape, to move through, and it feels just like a Wolves In The Throne Room record, like everything we’ve done before. Making it was very different, though. The aim of the record was to put us in a different musical position, to take the aspects of song-writing and record-making that we were comfortable with, the instruments, guitars, drums, vocals, song structure, methods of writing songs, to take all those things off the table and force ourselves into a recording process that was very alien to us.”

 

How much of a challenge was it to express yourself musically without those familiar structures, to write music closer to the paradigm of Dark Ambient than Metal?

“Yeah, we didn’t have verse, chorus, bridge, all that kind of stuff. Our Heavy Metal song structures are pretty abstract, pretty sprawling, but we still think about it in terms of a song. With this album we didn’t have that so much. But there is a structure, there is movement from beginning to end, which is different to a lot of Dark Ambient music. A lot of Dark Ambient music, or Ambient music in general, just delivers the listener into an open space that might mutate, might transform, might pulsate, but it doesn’t move – literally – from one place to the next, there’s not a beginning and an end necessarily. On Celestite we do have that, there is a sort of narrative flow throughout the songs and throughout the whole album rather than just having an expanse of sound like you would on a true ambient record.”

 

You’ve previously referenced Tangerine Dream as an influence – would you associate the music on Celestite more with Kraut Rock, then, than with Dark Ambient?

“Kraut Rock was a big influence on this album just in terms of the equipment we used, equipment from the 70s and 80s rather than the more digital stuff that you’d hear on Dark Ambient records. There are elements of Kraut Rock, or Dark Ambient music, but also more straight-forward Electronic music. I mean, the harsh, blighted soundscapes in Jeff Mills’ music, Detroit techno music, that’s a big influence on this album, and it always has been. We’ve always been influenced by electronic music, that method of creating soundscapes has always been a thread that’s run in the background of our music, but on this album it’s more to the front.”

 

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You are not the first Black Metal band to walk the path into more Ambient and Electronic territories. Do you feel any kinship with groups like Ulver that have gone before you?

“Yes and no. I mean, there are a few good examples from Norwegian Black Metal. Burzum, of course, was infamous for that, though perhaps under duress as he didn’t have his normal instruments available to him in prison and had to crank out a Neo-Folk ambient record. Fenriz too, he had his Dark Ambient band in the 90’s, but honestly it wasn’t something that was a big influence to us. It’s something that we were aware of and it’s going to be a comparison on this album because we’re an ostensibly BM band who’ve done an ostensibly ambient or electronic album, but that’s not where our heads are at. We’re very much in our own trippy little universe.”

 

In previous interviews you’ve expressed a changing relationship with the term Black Metal – initially embracing it, then slowly distancing yourself from it. How relevant do you think that term is to you now?

“I feel less and less connection to it, honestly, and I feel that’s purely a function of developing as a musician, developing as a person and as WITTR develops. It’s just very natural that when you’re just starting out, and this is very true for all bands, you’re a sum of your influences and you’re consciously trying to emulate the music and the art that has been inspirational to you. It’s just a natural thing that as time goes on labels and definitions cease to have as much meaning and you do your own thing. I think a band like Neurosis is a good example. They aren’t Punk, they aren’t Crust, they aren’t Doom, they’re just Neurosis and there’s nothing else like them. And though I’m loathe to put myself in that category of a band who are as important and magnificent as Neurosis, I think that’s true for us. There are not a lot of bands that sound like WITTR, or have a similar approach that we do. We’ve carved out a very unique niche for ourselves.”

 

Interesting that you should mention Neurosis as, having taking their sounds to an extreme position with ‘The Eye Of Every Storm’, they then seemed to go back on themselves, returning to the heavy riffs and dramatic song-writing of previous albums. Can you imagine yourselves going back to Metal?

“Definitely. That’s been the intention the whole time. If we do another album in the future, we’ll definitely reincorporate guitars, drums and Nathan’s harsh vocals, because that’s really what the band is. Celestite was a necessary experiment. A way of tapping into some new energies to challenge ourselves, to challenge what WITTR can be. But if we do music in the future, we feel very compelled to reincorporate guitars and drums. Of course it won’t be like our first album – it can’t be, we’ve grown and we’re at a new point in our lives – but it’s an idea that’s exciting to me, to bring guitars, drums and the Metal elements back into our music. We’re about creating a space, a sonic space to journey in, to get lost in, and Metal is just a means to an end really. That’s so important to us, to use our music to create the opportunity for the listener to go into a different world, enter a different consciousness – that’s really what this is all about to us.”

 

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RICHIE H-R


Laster – De Verste Verte Is Hier

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With recent black metal releases either making you want to march off into battle (Winterfylleth) or spend an evening viciously murdering crackheads in an urban underpass (Anaal Nathrakh), it’s refreshing when an album comes along that’s perfect for merely slumping back in your chair and drifting off into the void. Dutch trio Laster are the architects of said proposed lazy endeavour but don’t be fooled into thinking that their debut album De Verste Verte Is Hier (Dunkelheit) is a snooze-fest, for it contains a plethora of fascinating motifs that demonstrates once again that atmosphere matters more than mindless aggression.

Nestling somewhere on the outer-reaches of the black metal spectrum where drone, ambient and Shoegaze converge for an exclusively morbid and dream-like tea party, the 45 minutes of De Verste Verte Is Hier is akin to wandering through a ruined, expressionist landscape of abandoned factories, mist-shrouded plains and decaying, haunted cathedrals. The riffing veers between light speed ferocity that calls to mind Krallice if they were given a heavy dose of lithium to more mid-paced plodding that references the darkest lights of the USBM depressive scene, such as the suicide obsessed Xasthur.

There are enough noticeable differences between songs to ensure that the same ideas aren’t merely recycled with a vaguely different coat of paint, such as the horribly surreal choir-and-shrieking section that appears in ‘Tot de tocht ons verlicht’ and the devastatingly bleak piano passage in ‘Ik – mijn masker’. But the real rug-pull moment comes in the arse-shakingly danceable post-punk of the title track, which is like being in a nightclub with Cenobites for bouncers.

All in all, a thoroughly impressive debut from a trio of talented multi-instrumentalists who know how to paint grim pictures with enough beauty mixed in to warrant many a further inspection.

 

8.0/10

Laster on Facebook

 

JAMES CONWAY


Primordial – Where Greater Men Have Fallen

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The toms stir, an introductory galloping battering, a rhythmic tribal call to arms, as the simple lead guitar line rides up and down the front of the horde, rousing, preparing, hinting at what is to come, as the opening track of Where Greater Men Have Fallen (Metal Blade) builds to kick into a timeless opening, an initiation where all the trademarks of the very best of Primordial are evident. Our title track erupts  with ‘Hammerheart’ (Bathory) meets ‘Blood Of My Enemies’ (Manowar), driving, open, churning chords and Alan ‘Nemtheanga’ Averill’s distinctive, powerful vocals, preaching, imploring and then leading a stirring chorus to what is, unconditionally, one of the anthems of the year.

After a gap of three and a half years since the Redemption At The Puritan’s Hand this is a mighty return, with the weight of expectation not just shrugged off, but decimated by the pounding Pagan Metal delivered by the hands of the best in the business. For, at their peak, Primordial have no peers in the field of the epic.

Emote is what Primordial do best, and this is an album that drips with feelings of regret, reflection and, conversely, inspiration; Averill’s intelligent themes, authoritative words and voice enhance the profound interplay of Ciáran MacUiliam and Michael Ó Floinn’s guitars, whose interaction on tracks like ‘Come The Flood’ call to mind Anathema’s grandiose The Silent Enigma (Peaceville). ‘Born To Night’ gradually unfurls to reveal a ‘Battle Hymn’ most proud, while ‘The Seed of Tyrants’ releases the rage, nodding to a more extreme past, both musically and lyrically. While Primordial are oft mislabelled as a Black Metal band, ‘…Tyrants’ serves as a reminder from whence they came, but, as ever with those touches of class the band possess to enhance, colour and immerse.

Yet, this is not a flawless album, as with blood both stirred and pumping by our introduction, ‘Babel’s Tower’ and ‘The Alchemist’s Head’ are downers; decent if unspectacular down-shifts of pace, which, while still intrinsically “Primordial”, call to mind the unhurried moments of Imrama (Cacophonous), and despite Averill’s impassioned story-telling, neither grab or evoke like the opening track, or the crushingly pessimistic ‘Ghosts of the Charnel House’. That can be the problem when you start that strongly, as it is a high watermark for the rest of an album to live up to.

After establishing their sound on second album A Journey’s End (Misanthropy), it has been since their fifth album, The Gathering Wilderness (Metal Blade), that the band have truly matured and hit an exceptional run of form that takes them into Where Greater Men Have Fallen, their eighth full length, and its moving combination of classic Bathory inspired metal, doomier tropes and an unmistakable grasp of the epic, all draped in those characteristic Primordial effects.

Yet, are Primordial victims of their own success? The previous three albums are of such a high standard, and are pregnant with anthems that, like the title track or the exceptional closer ‘Wield Lightning To Split The Sun’ – murky, bleak, earnest, wringing with remorse and possibly the best piece of music the band has delivered over the course of their career – means that when Primordial deliver “good” it can, initially appear disappointing.

Bookended by two incredible tracks is a layered, powerful and impassioned album, resplendent with mood changes, from reflective, to angry, to moving – the leads that pull ‘Born To Night’ to its close soulfully uplifting – and to judge by the merits of others Where Greater Men Have Fallen stands tall. Yet measured by their own imperious canon, this latest release, while showcasing everything that is respected and esteemed of Primordial, is not first among equals.

Primordial are too proficient an outfit to release anything other than an excellent album. Just how excellent, when compared to their own standards, is the question at hand, but Where Greater Men Have Fallen is laden with dark anthems and fervent sincerity and, chest out, stands proudly as a laudable addition to a most impressive catalogue.

 

8.5/10

Primordial on Facebook

 

STEVE TOVEY


Pestilential Shadows – Ephemeral

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If you ever need reminding how insular Metal has become, and how incomprehensible it can seem from the outside, tell a non-Metal friend that “Suicidal Black Metal” is an acknowledged sub-genre term and see how they respond.

Pestilential Shadows play the kind of slow, “atmospheric” Black Metal that trades aggression and chaos in for bleakness and stark melody. Long, meandering compositions based around sinister riffing and mournful shrieked vocals, Ephemeral’s (Séance Records) seven tracks offer no surprises but accomplish what they set out for with aplomb. This is music than can become dull and repetitive quickly, but Pestilential Shadows have a solid grasp of bleak melody which keeps their songs engaging and memorable – the soloing in particular is quite beautiful at times, and their riffs are genuinely catchy in the way that Black Metal bands often fail to be.

The biggest drawback to Ephemeral is the same as that of many of other Extreme Metal records – that there’s little to really set it apart from the other albums in its genre.  With a defined, formalised style and such a narrow emotional range, it’s inevitable that there’s little to distinguish Pestilential Shadows from their peers.  Without fresh ideas or a blurring of genre-boundaries only high quality could cause them to stand apart, and though they’re competent to a fault they’re not quite good enough for that. As lazy a journalistic cop-out as this is, Ephemeral is ultimately one of those if-you-like-this-kind-of-thing, this-is-the-kind-of-thing-you’ll-like albums – a worthy listen for anyone already sold on this very specific style, but not good enough to draw attention beyond its automatic fan-base.

6.5/10

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RICHIE HR


Fen – Carrion Skies

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There are two things I want to get out of the way before I get into this.  The first is that I’ve never really seen the appeal of the whole Atmospheric Pine Forest BM thing – even ignoring the uncomfortable nationalist overtones, Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone and Drudkh et al leave me cold, and A Forest Of Stars seem like a band who had a great idea for an image, but rushed into the studio before they’d written any songs. It’s not a style I’m inclined towards, despite its current popularity, so when an album in that style does click with me it’s something to pay attention to.

The second thing is that Fen have made me rewrite my End Of Year List just over a week before the deadline, and for that I am not happy with them.

On paper Fen are very much part of the aforementioned Black Metal subgenre, and their previous albums have all passed me by much like their peers, but despite no obvious shifts in style Carrion Skies (Code 666) manages to transcend the limitations of its chosen style. A big part of the problem with this music for me is that “atmospheric” is frequently an excuse for nothing to happen – big, heart-rending riffs take their own sweet time to float majestically past, and everything is filled with a sense of mounting tension that never goes anywhere – but Carrion Skies is dynamic.  Songs are long but eventful, striding purposefully from huge riffs and tormented shrieks to more contemplative passages as if THERE’S ACTUALLY A GOOD REASON FOR THEM TO DO THAT, rather than it simply being lazy musical short-hand for “we are interesting”. There are suggestions of latter-day Enslaved at several points, but without the sense of lazy back-slapping and tedious “maturity” that plagues their recent albums.

Another thing that’s frequently absent from the more “atmospheric” or “progressive” Black Metal bands is passion. Indeed, it’s a concept that Black Metal bands frequently struggle with balancing effectively, either overloading on it to the point that they’re constantly spitting fury anger and nothing else, or they’ve traded in all their feeling for vague “atmosphere” and ripping off a bunch of second-hand Pink Floyd references (hello again, Enslaved).  Carrion Skies is a passionate album, charged with fist-waving bravado, teary-eyed loss, bits that go Duh-Nuh! Duh-duh-nuh! and all the other ridiculous stuff that makes Metal great, but it balances that passion with a thoughtful, contemplative approach to song-writing which strengthens rather than detracts from it.

What really makes Carrion Skies stand out not just in its own subgenre but in Extreme Metal in genre is the depth and range of expression.  Extreme Metal is by nature monolithic – that’s frequently one of its selling points – and it’s rare to hear an album that spends much time exploring more than one mood.  We can have Angry, Sad, Majestic or Bat-shit Insane, but having more than one of them across an album is ambitious, and blending several together in a rich, unfolding tapestry of more than one feeling? Is that even legal?

Carrion Skies is certainly one of the Metal albums of the year in any sub-genre, and a genuinely impressive achievement for a band who until now have usually been mentioned in reference to other, similar bands. It ranks alongside new releases by Pyrrhon and Tombs (with whom they share some similarities, but Fen are the rawer, rockier, more achingly human cousin to Tombs’ Neurosis-driven thunder) as the richest and most emotionally expressive Metal albums of 2014, and should have something to offer even to people who haven’t previously found Fen and their peers terribly interesting.

9.0/10

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RICHIE HR


Downfall of Gaia – Aeon Unveils The Throne of Decay

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It is during the fourth track, the abrasive ‘Of Stillness & Solitude’, a misnomer of a song-title if ever there was one, that you truly, madly, deeply get Downfall of Gaia. The Isis roiling builds into a chaotic clashing juxtaposition of rusted, raging black metal, vocal shrieks pained with frustration and defeat, and a draining feeling of epic repression immerses as the despotic union of sludge, post-metal and black metal, with a steady jarring relentlessness, wraps the consciousness.

Suspension of disbelief may have originated in the cinematic world, but it adequately applies to many albums – albums that act or behave as a soundtrack, or soundscape (vomits in mouth), if you will. With albums, it’s that creating of an atmosphere, that complete absorption into the feeling the band are creating, where you accept their alternate reality. The more cerebral will do this, guiding you on an aural journey. Cult of Luna excels at it. Early Burzum damned near perfected it. But take it from the hands of the Master Builders and put it in the paws of the less adept you get moments, like at the outset of ‘Darkness Inflames These Sapphire Eyes’, where apposite styles are forced together, when the brooding introduction hits cataclysmic rage in a ungainly segue, where it snaps you out of that false reality. It’s not contrast; it’s a cluster-fuck, as if a surgeon were to reattach a severed finger with a staple gun and gaffa tape.

If there’s a thin line between love and hate, there’s an even thinner one between tense and ominous and, well, boring and jarring, and it’s a line Aeon Unveils The Throne of Decay (Metal Blade) tramples up and down. It has the composite parts. It has the bleakness of Winter, the discordance and pervading opacity of Neurosis and the abrasiveness of Krallice. It has the mood bits, it has the caustic futile wrath, but it doesn’t always know how to put it together and keep it together. But when it works, when ‘Excavated’’s harrowing 8 minutes bleeds on you, Downfall of Gaia nail all the nuances of unsettling, bleak music and it is beautifully horrible. I get the attempts at contrast, I get the pervading mood of hopelessness, but I also get a lot of cut and paste, of not quite knowing how to blend it all together. There’s a lot to recommend about Downfall of Gaia, but this is not their masterpiece. Not yet.

 

7.0/10

Downfall of Gaia on Facebook

 

STEVE TOVEY


Dire Omen Streaming New Album

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Canadian black/death metallers Dire Omen is streaming their new album Wresting the Revelation of Futility here . It is available via Dark Descent Records.

Track listing:

Here and Hereafter (Overture)
Onward with Wounds of Disillusion
Ossuary
Hemotically Possessed
Servus Sevorum Dei
Foretold Untethering from Existence
Beyond Stillness
Vacuous Altar
Inversion of Samadhi Dire Omen
Closing the Portal

DIRE OMEN is:

R. Rodas (Guitars/Vocals)
C. Thompson (Bass)
K. Trueblood (Drums)

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ZOM Debuts “Conquest”; Euro Tour With Dead Congregation Announced

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Black/death metal trio ZOM have debuted their new track “Conquest” and can be streamed here. It is off of their upcoming album Flesh Assimilation, out November 24th via Dark Descent Records in the US and November 30th via Invictus Productions in Europe. Artwork for the album was done by Zbyszek Bielak.

ZOM will be touring with Dead Congregation in December 2014 and January 2015. Dates are below.

25/12 Hamburg (De)
26/12 Brussels (Be)
27/12 Paris (Fr)
28/12 TBA
29/12 TBA
30/12 TBA
31/12 London (Eng)
01/01 France TBA
02/02 Zurich (Swi)
03/01 Oberhausen (De)
04/01 Berlin (De)
05/01 Copenhagen (Dk)


Saille – Eldritch

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No genre is set in stone, but Black Metal has been through quite a series of self-discoveries since three goons from Newcastle covered themselves in leather and spikes. Belgian six-piece Saille represent what I can’t help but think of as the “niceifying” of Black Metal, and the nine symphonic, atmospheric tracks on Eldritch (Code 666) may come as something of a shock if you’re used to the nastier end of the genre.

Not that this is going to set charts alight anytime soon, of course – by true mainstream standards the factors that make Black Metal unappealing (harsh shrieked vocals, buzzing guitars, sparsely but effectively used blast-beats) are still present, but they’re assembled with a grace, a breadth of expression, even a delicateness that Euronymous would have taken as a personal insult. The pomp and bombast that often characterises much “symphonic” Black Metal is also absent, and it’s a welcome absence – this isn’t Dimmu Borgir thundering away like Mussorgsky conducting Bowser’s Theme, but a much more reflective and considered approach to melodic, keyboard saturated Black Metal. The main reference point that occurred to me while listening was Schammasch, and though Eldritch lacks the depth and profundity of their monstrous Contradiction (Prosthetic), it still speaks positively of their knack for constructing Black Metal which is both catchy and deep.

You’re waiting for the catch, of course, and in this case it’s that Eldritch doesn’t quite have the depth of ideas needed to keep attention across its nine-track length and starts to outstay its welcome a little.  There are plenty of excellent ideas for the band to build on, however – from the spoken-word accompaniment of ‘Great God Pan’ to the churningly catchy melodies of ‘Aklo’ – that if they can trim their excess fat and develop more focus next time they might deliver something genuinely special.

For now, Eldritch comes highly recommended for anyone who doesn’t mind their Black Metal on the “nice” side.

7.0/10

Saille on Facebook

 

RICHIE HR

 


Video Premiere: Sahhr – Slay The Saviour

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USBM evil conjurers Sahhr have released their new video ‘Slay The Savior’ from their just released debut self-titled EP. Birthed into the world on Halloween, this California based group is made of members of notable bands such as Skull And Bullets, Dowager, Scarecrow and Unwritten Law. Ghost cult has partnered with our eternally devious comrades over at Earsplit PR for the premiere. 

Watch the video below:

 

The impressive video was Co-Directed by Jamie Phillips & Dale Pavinski for “GORILLA Punk Productions”.

Guitarist Aarsoth says of the video—


“The video was shot in one day in an abandoned warehouse in the ghettos of LA. where a known serial killer had brought victims. There was dried blood and syringes everywhere. We broke in and just shot guerrilla style. It stunk of death, was over 100 degrees..all the cameras stopped working and the candles melted. Several of us were arrested as we finished..brilliant.”

 

Official Press Release:

With the official unveiling of their debut, self-titled three-track EP looming, Cvlt Nation offers up a taste of “Altar Of Maggots” from Los Angeles blackened death miscreants,SAHHR, for mass consumption.

Written by vocalist Ryllyeh and guitarist Aarsoth and recorded at Lot 54 Studio in Huntington Beach, California by Dylan-James Ehren Brock (Ghost Of Abel, Skull And Bullets, Dowager, Intestinal Buffet), SAHHR combines all the primary rudiments of black metal, death metal and metalcore into an infernal mix of unrepentant audio plague fit for fervent devotees of Watain, 1349, Goatwhore and Lamb Of God.

Relays Ryllyeh of the heinous hymn on deck, “‘Altar Of Maggots’ is a diabolical epic of anger, delivered in a concise, blackened package. An anti-theological anthem shouted to the war gods of old.”

Adds Cvlt Nation, “This song delivers a vastness of filth surround by melodic ghosts head banging to the pound of their grim drums!”

Featuring past and current members of Skull And Bullets, Dowager, Scarecrow and Unwritten Law, SAHHR formed earlier this year by singer/songwriter Ryllyeh. A veteran of the New York City punk and metal scenes since the early 1980s, Ryllyeh’s (AKA-Joe Truck, also a world renowned tattoo artist) past musical endeavors include time spent in ‘80s deathrock bands Scarecrow and Braineaters, the latter of which included ex-Samhain guitarist, Damien. He also plays bass and screams in doom heavyweights-Dowager. Ryllyeh united with guitarist Aarsoth earlier this year and instantly began composing what would become the trio of tracks occupying the EP.

“Blackened is the end, but in the case of California’s SAHHR, that doesn’t mean a narrow artistic vision in getting there. Their debut self-titled EP deftly blends an unlikely mix of influences; each track begins in a completely different place than where it ultimately ends… Groove and grimness come together in a very cohesive way here. ‘Blackened’ can allow for far more experimentation and exploration of influences than committing fully to the corpse-painted antics of full-on black metal, and SAHHR are throwing an exciting combination of sounds at the wall. Luckily, all of it sticks, and we’re eager to hear where this band takes their sonic assault in the future.” – Metal Insider

Sahhr will be released digitally on October 31st, 2014 at THIS LOCATION and on CD via Domestic Genocide in November. A host of special Halloween in Hell.

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http://www.enjoygram.com/sahhrofficial
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