“You’re right, cop. You’re right, I *am* a rotten bastard. I admit it. But I tell ya something. Even though I got a lot of hate inside, I got some friends who ain’t got hate inside. They’re filled with nothing but love. Their only crime is growing their hair long, smoking a little grass and getting high, looking at the stars at night, writing poetry in the sand. And what do you do? You bust down their doors, man. Dumb-ass cop. You bust down their doors and you bust down their heads.”

The weekend’s swag brought with it a host of fresh offerings from the top brass of the heavy metal underworld, including (somewhat tentatively) Alcest’s Les Voyages de l’Âme, The Thousandfold Epicentre by The Devil’s Blood, and the re-release of Enslaved’s breakthrough demo, Yggdrasill. But surprisingly it was Orange Goblin, a band that has lingered on the periphery since my “Kyuss phase”, who sneaked in on an impulse buy and ended up towering above the rest. Not only has their new album, A Eulogy For The Damned, reawakened a long-dormant yearning for gleeful, feel-good stoner rock, but it’s also demonstrated the infinite untapped potential of the traditional rock ’n’ roll format.

Memories of my brief flirtations with these London-based riff lords are patchy, but fragments from 2000’s The Big Black still faintly bounce around my skull. Despite hardly counting myself as a dedicated follower, what I do know is that Orange Goblin have been slogging away for almost 20 years now, gathering a rabid pack of red-eyed fans in the process, and this alone was worth swiping it off the shelves for. It’s been a long, consistent career and with this latest effort the Goblin shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Great stoner rock needs to make the listener feel as though the sky collapsing in an explosive psychedelic meltdown, regardless of whether they’re high or not. As mentioned, Kyuss were always a good litmus test for this. But Orange Goblin has refined these trippy soundscapes down the ages for themselves through a rapid-fire, open-string rumble; a deliciously down-tuned approach the band has firmly stamped its identity all over. This classic motif returns with rapturous effect on opening track ‘Red Tide Rising’, which can be streamed below. Never before have they sounded this heavy, driven, confident or at ease with their musical ability.

Because while A Eulogy for the Damned is one of the most crushing albums of the year so far, it is also steeped in A-grade songwriting channelled from the annals of Golden Age rock ’n’ roll. Of course, when mired in stoner/doom territory such as this, Sabbath still haunts every twist and turn of those sprawling blues scales, but the album also unashamedly steers into many a rousing and anthemic chorus, like Minor Threat butchering Mötley Crüe or Cheap Trick (‘The Filthy & the Few’, ‘Save Me from Myself’). Echoes of Thin Lizzy and Motörhead are also weaved in among the guitar mastery on display here, whipping tracks like ‘Stand for Something’, ‘Return to Mars’ and ‘The Bishops Wolf’ into a flurry of melodic detail.

The brilliant and varied vocals often carry the weight of the tunes, leaving the immovable bass and percussion sections to carve great technicolour passages through the stratosphere and beyond. As a result, this is – shock-horror – an incredibly accessible record, so leave your grim-kvlt-trve pretences at the door when sinking your teeth into this one. But fear not, O fans of heavy metal thunder, the Goblin has provided for you with the dense and delirious ‘Acid Trial’, the creeping doom of ‘The Fog’ and the occult whispers of ‘Death of Aquarius’. Basically, if you don’t enjoy this album, you aren’t to be trusted. Light that bowl!

A Eulogy for the Damned was released through Candlelight on February 13.

To remove almost all subjectivity and embodiment from a piece of art, to have such strong a vision as to provoke an atmosphere of complete and utter isolation within the kernel of nature and to deliver this vision with the conviction and honesty of a knowing artist, that is Paysage d’Hiver.

The creations of Wintherr have left profound marks on many, including this LURKER. The treasured back catalogue of this influential wanderer left me eager to understand why there has been no new magic from Wintherr’s camp since 2007. What follows is an interview conducted in the subdued winter of 2012 in an effort to bring all LURKERs back to the eternal, unflinching visions better conveyed by nobody.

The music of Paysage d’hiver is very inhuman. The music is heavily based on different modes of nature, winter and night. It takes me to places completely devoid of human interaction. Can you tell us about Paysage d’hiver’s interest in nature, winter and darkness, in particular?

Winter has and will always be a very intense, mystical and solitary concept. It forces deep self-introspection and provides a mirror-image of what nature itself offers during that specific season: everything is asleep, shut down to it’s very core, giving a very pure feeling of what truly IS. I personally think this idea is very important, not only to myself, but to nature itself. So winter, or more specifially, being outside experiencing nature in winter, not only offers me uncomfortable feelings, such as coldness, darkness, misanthropy. It also provides me with the opportunity to face my surroundings and inner self with a crystal like clarity.

The strong connection with Paysage d’hiver towards the aformentioned aspects is down to my own comfort with the season of winter. It offers silence which makes it possible to go deep into my own mind and learn about my own emotion. It’s very much like a self styled kind of meditation… which of course influences the music a lot.

Paysage d’hiver is strongly connected to my innerself, it’s an expression of my innerself in terms words could never convey. So, mirrored by my surroundings, winter is the perfect “platform” for the “concept” of Paysage d’hiver. Yet it is also simply a feeling, I am sure some people know exactly what kind of feeling I am talking about and for the others, it’s quite impossible to put this feeling into words.

What goes into a Paysage d’hiver release? With compositions that sometimes hit the hour long mark, where does one even begin when composing a demo?

I just begin! I am a highly imaginative person, so most of what you hear is basically pictures put into “music”. I can’t really tell you how composing happens. It just happens. Always new, always different. Really depends on what is going on inside my head and also what experiences I have, be it spiritually, impressions of nature, thoughts, feelings, etc. Basically everything I am at that moment floats into it. It’s like opening a gate to within, putting behind the everyday-conciousness. A view of myself in a more intuitive manner. This might sound very egocentric, but if I open this gate, once I am in that state of being totally inside myself, many things from outside, let’s say from the cosmos, float into my perception as well. I think I kind of knock out my every-day-conciousness and thus have the possibility of a broader, purer form of perception. A form of meditation by making sounds and melodies? I think that might be it.

Your chosen vehicle of expression drifts between ambience and black metal. What do these chosen genres mean to you, personally?

Monotonous, ritualistic black metal riffing or ambient soundscapes just seem to be a perfect vehicle for what I’m doing. Of course I used to listen to these genres a lot and that is because they transport the most intense images of all genres for me. Thus it was natural to use these forms as the vehicle for Paysage d’hiver.

Why the name Paysage d’hiver?

I didn’t feel around for a “Cliché” kind of name at that time for my music. Paysage d’hiver appeared to me by coincidence, it was not intentional. It just seemed perfect!

Care to share some art that you enjoy and influences you?

Musicwise, I listen to many different kinds of music. Mostly it is dramatic, hypnotic and psychedelic music. What ever draws my attention in whatever form, I care about. This could be the arrangement of a tune or a melody, or a sound which really sucks me in.

I don’t see much point of telling you names though.

For myself, Paysage d’hiver magnifies the colossal power nature has over us as individuals. There is a similar dialectic within the work of Darkspace. It is essentially Schopenhauer’s full feeling of the sublime – knowledge of the vastness of the universe and the consequent insignificance of the observer, gaining a kind of bizarre pleasure from beholding violent, destructive objects. I have yet to come across an artist who can convey this like you. A Paysage d’hiver piece echoes the sentiment of Caspar David Friedrich’s work, such as ‘Die gescheiterte Hoffnung’ and ‘Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer’ perfectly. Is this feeling of the sublime an important part of your art? Can you elaborate on this?

Honestly I have never read any works of Schopenhauer, so I can’t answer your question properly. Something to remedy, isn’t it? But yes, the feeling of the sublime is an important part of Paysage d’hiver for three reasons. First, it’s simply a great feeling. Second, by going down deep into myself I feel the greatness and godly spirit of nature. Third, I get the same feeling when surrounded by nature. I try to capture this feeling of the sublime within my music.

Paysage d’hiver releases have a very lo-fi, raw sounding production. Why?

Because of the atmosphere! If I had the possibility to have the same atmosphere with hi-fi sound, I would do that. So far, this has not been possible for me. For Paysage d’hiver the atmosphere is the most important aspect. So the sound is more of an artistic approach than anything else. This kind of sound really opens me up to the possibilities of the imagination than clear sounding instruments would. I don’t want to see a jerk with a lousy guitar and even lousier playing skills (meaning: me) before my eyes but the sublime power of nature, great landscapes of winter, mountains and woods.

Was there ever a direction to Paysage d’hiver? Early work references journeys to fortresses and ‘Der Baumfrau’, while latter day material is more focused solely on nature.

I think I have already depicted the reasons and directions of and for making this music in former answers. I don’t agree with the disjunction of forteresses and later solely nature. Paysage d’hiver is a journey and thus focusses upon different aspects of the wanderer. “Nacht” for instance doesn’t simply refer to a nightly winter forest, it refers to a state of benightedness. It is all very metaphorical because it all refers to my personal situation at a given time. Except put into a story and every album is a chapter of that whole story. It deals with different aspects of my world that I have built within my imagination which I call “Paysage d’hiver” (of course). But the chapters are not linear like within a book, nor are they linear corresponding to the release dates of the albums. I want the listeners to use their own imagination, feel free to mix the chapters however you feel suits you best. Use your imagination! That is imperative. All you think is correct, it’s not that there is a specific intention behind this music. Make your own journey with it. Of course I did mine and it strongly reffers to this journey, but it is most likely totally different to anybody else.

Previously you have mentioned how Paysage d’hiver is largely a personal voyage. How have you responded to the attention to your project, the sky-rocketing prices that original cassettes fetch and the obsession in the underground with your art in general?

At first, I felt honoured that there are actually people out there interested in what I am doing. I don’t think this is self-evident. Actually I didn’t expect that at all! When I first released “Steineiche” I was very proud of it and thought that there would be a lot of interest in it. Well, there wasn’t. This might sound strange but back then this was the case. So I didn’t really have any intentions on releasing anything else because I didn’t see the point in bothering people with music nobody is interested in. After 6 more “Demos” I still felt that somehow this should be available, so I made those tapes. With the rather bad experience that was “Steineiche” I never thought they would get much attention. It was never intended to create any kind of “hype”.

I try to be strict with what I am doing, I don’t want to raise the availability. I consider the production of tapes and vinyl more as collector’s item. With the unlimited release of the CD’s, it is possible to purchase Paysage d’hiver’s music without any big, expensive problems.

The self titled demo is arguably the most ‘black metal-centered’ demo in your back catalogue. ‘Welt Aus Eis’ may just represent the aesthetic peak of the black metal movement in general. Could you please elaborate on the concept of this album and the meaning of ‘Welt Aus Eis’ in particular?

This whole album is an “overview” of the world of Paysage d’hiver. Thus the title of the album. There’s nothing specific to tell you about that album or song, it would rather be interesting to hear what you have to say about it, what opinions the listener brings to it…

I can’t put into words what I see within that title, I tried to give a picture of it through the music and lyrics and artwork and what I wanted to say with it speaks within the collaboration of those three aspects. It is not a question of understanding, but rather of perceiving, so what should I tell you?

We live in a society dominated by technology. It determines how we socialize, entertain ourselves and earn a living. Do you think modern man has lost touch with the realities of nature? What are the implications of this?

We are living in a dualistic world, so there are two sides to the coin. It all depends on how we deal with and look at it. In my personal opinion. I think humanity as a whole has to change quite dramatically. We have to change our way of thinking which would of course change our approach towards nature, but also towards technology. I don’t romanticise any ancient culture being closer to nature, so I don’t proclaim “back to nature”, but rather “forward to nature”. I think it all depends on how we deal with ourselves and our surroundings, especially as a whole, as one entity. On a very personal scale, I think we have the possibility to have a highly technologized world but still have a strong connection towards nature. I don’t think those two things collide with each other but they do if we carry on putting our selfmade monetary system in the centre of everything! I think this is the illness of our “western” society.

Thanks to globalization this affects the rest of the world too. It affects everyone because of a very small number of people who are still playing sand-box games. This might sound totally unrealistic and hippie-romantic but just imagine what would change if we eliminated money from the world. We are so used to it that we cannot imagine life without it. Nonetheless it is us who have invented and given it value, it is not a natural phenomenon. I don’t say money is generally evil but it is with what has been made out of it. The former idea of having an easy, open-ended trading system is ok but if you see that nowadays only about 5-6% of the money is actually being traded, there is definitely something wrong. The system has fortunes for only a very very small amount of people and only disadvantages for the rest. If we would change that to be fortunate for everybody, most problems in this world, including exhaustion of nature and it’s resources, would not even factor into the equation.

So. Basically I think the main problems of the whole of humanity lie within this western capitalist ideology we cling too. The system is broken and we must fix it. Opening your eyes to the realities of the recent economic collapses, monetary system abuse and underlying causes makes me sick.

It has been quite on both the Paysage d’hiver and Kunsthall front for close to 4 years. Can we expect anything new in the foreseeable future? How have you been satisfying the creative side of your brain in recent years?

I have had much less time for concentrating on my musical projects recently… for different reasons. Mainly down to my lack of time as I also have other things in my life which have become more important. I have a son, girlfriend, I need to work, my personal demands on the quality of my music have grown and thus it takes more time. I cannot only focus upon art in general for my personal development.

But “Das Tor” will be finished very soon. So yes, there will be new stuff coming in the forseeable future!

When will the winterjackets arrive?!

I am working on it, they will come, that is for sure! But when? I don’t know. Wait and see!

Do you enjoy hiking and exploring? The Alps must provide huge amounts of inspiration for you.

Yes, definitely!

The classic example of the musical elitist is the “I only liked the first demo” fan. The fan who liked the band before they were big, before anyone else had heard of them and now subsequently has done a volt- face. Generally, this is the attitude of the lazy and the trend-follower. It’s much easier to pretend to be into something when your scene dictates you must when said band only has one demo and you only have to spend 4 tracks pretending you get it. By the time the full-length arrives, you can jettison the band along with everyone else who was there at the beginning, man.

There are times, however, when preferring a band’s earliest output is a legitimate position to take. When Alcest first arrived, they were presenting something awesome. Yes, the shoegaze influence was obvious but they still managed to come across as something completely new and unique. They felt special, and like something destined of a very specific moment in time. Their first UK show back in 2010, supporting the Vision Bleak at the same venue they’re now headlining, saw them deliver an incredible set. It seemed that this would almost certainly be a one off, and that added a sense of bittersweet undercurrent to the evening. I remember walking out of the venue after the gig, resigned to the fact I’d never see Alcest live again, but also feeling like the night was all the better for that.

Fast forward two years, and you know the rest of the story. Tonight, the queue for the Purple Turtle snakes down the road, round the corner and as far as the eye can see thereafter. It’s an eclectic mix, but I have to say that despite whatever the naysayers would have you think, not solely comprised of teenage girls.

Due to the Purple Turtle deciding it’s a good idea to ID everyone without exception, by the time we make it into the venue, Soror Dolorosa are already in full flight. Expressing Cure vibes with vigour, frontman Andy Julia clearly didn’t get the message that the 80s were over and their frantic, tortuous garage-goth is delivered with the ghost of Iain Curtis never far from the stage. This might be obvious worship, but it comes with the polish of a far more experienced band, it’s a true shame that we’re not subject to a full headline set tonight.

Les Discrets are up next and are without question the band that I’ve come here to see. Septembre et Ses Dernières Pensées was a stunningly good album and it’s been a long wait since 2010 to actually see these songs performed live. Happily, they don’t disappoint. The pathos of the Les Discrets experience is perfectly translated live, with the full grand scale of their melancholy taking on a new quality within this context. Les Discrets obviously resonate with the audience and their songs transcend even the heights achieved by their studio output. There’s a real charged atmosphere. Fursy Teyssier is visibly moved by the reaction and it seems that he has greatly underestimated the support for his project. It’s fair to say that, for most of the audience, this could go on all night.

Bearing in mind that almost all of the legendary Amesoeurs are on stage at this point, it was perhaps to be expected that the spectre of that gone-too-soon band would get a look in. That said, it’s still an amazing moment when the open strains of ‘Gas in Veins’ kicks in, and while it’s a smaller section of the audience that responds viscerally to this, it’s still by far the most intense reaction seen all night. Finishing with a sweeping ‘Song for Mountains’, it’s to absolute rapture and emphatic shouts of “MORE” that Les Discrets leave the stage in London, hopefully not for the last time.

Which brings us to Alcest, a band that I’m immensely conflicted about. To clarify, Alcest are great. Their music is universal, has crossed over to a number of audiences that would never normally listen to music associated with the scenes that they move in and has in return, I’m sure, acted as a “gateway” for many into more obtuse territories. They’ve done this because they have proper song-writing nous and the ability to convey emotion spectacularly. They fall firmly into the camp of “Sunday afternoon music” but are all the stronger for this. They’re also a band that only a couple of years ago I had a massive affinity for. That said, I just don’t feel the same love that I did for them back then, and while I’ve listened to and appreciated Les Voyages Des L’ame, it hasn’t compelled me to revisit it.

I’m keeping a firmly opened mind, especially given the symbolism of tonight’s full circle from that support slot back in 2010. I guess it’s fair to say that my expectations are for a great show by a great band, but for the elusive je ne sais quoi from earlier days to probably remain in the past.

Opening with ‘Autre Temps’, the band are tight as hell. Vocals sit a bit too low in the mix for full clarity, but bass tones are deep, guitars crunch and drums, as you would expect from the hand of Winterhalter are as usual beyond superlatives. The setlist tonight covers ground from all previous releases and is an evidence of a band who are masters of their craft. It’s not just the quality of the delivery of each song, but an understanding of how to formulate a coherent whole that makes the Alcest live experience so convincing. This can safely be described as a band at the top of the game, and fair play to them, it’s through hard work and perseverance that Alcest have arrived at this position.

That said, I’m still not convinced. There are definite highlights, in particular ‘Percées de lumière‘, which I would defend vigorously as one of the best songs to come out of this particular scene. It closes the main set with a sense of urgency perhaps lacking elsewhere this evening and when the band returns to the stage for ‘Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde‘ it’s a spectacular moment.

On reflection, and taken in summation though it just seems that some of that old magic around Alcest has been lost. It’s not something tangible or something that can be quantified but it just feels like we’re not watching the same band that we did before. This is a very, very good band playing spectacularly well and getting a very well-deserved reception for it. Somehow, though, it just doesn’t quite hit the gut the way that it did before, and that is a real pity.

Taking a different approach entirely was local outfit Kataleptic. Death metal by numbers and totally impossible to take seriously (“Womb Pounder” adorning their merch), they do what they do and they do it with competence and infectious enthusiasm but leave me with relatively little to say about them.

Svart Crown took to the stage next, and the step up in professionalism was noticeable. The French horde carry presence and menace in abundance, hammering their way through the set without easing off for so much as a second. I hadn’t heard the band at all prior to this performance, and I doubt it’d be the sort of thing I’d be interested in at home, but it was certainly a powerful and commanding show that forced me to the back of the venue to escape the sheer noise of it all. Definitely worth a look if you prefer your black metal on the deathlier side.

All of this is but mere preamble for the band I’d come and spent my ill-begotten £8 on. Ulcerate‘s stunning The Destroyers of All was certainly a highlight of mine from last year, a masterful display of ferocity, despair, stomach-churning crescendo and outright arcane death metal sorcery, the Kiwis had a lot to live up to. Scarcely believing it was possible to play this stuff live, the band ripped through material from their last two albums in a display of jaw-dropping virtuosity, the insane climax of ‘Cold Becoming’ leaving me in pieces. A quite unbelievable display, and one I would urge you all to catch a glimpse of if they’re in your neck of the woods.

Fast forward a few days, and an evening of doom at my local. I missed the first act, but was assured by pals of mine that Black Magician played an excellent set, complete with visual accompaniment. I was pleased to arrive in plenty of time to catch the criminally underrated Grimpen Mire in all of their foul, fire-breathing glory. Their debut album is finally due out some time this year (their 2009 EP Death on the Moor is available as a free download here) and if it comes anywhere close to approaching the gut-rotting intensity of their live performance, it will surely be a contender. The performance is as heavy as one would expect, and when the band wasn’t busy bludgeoning the audience they had the time and the skill to throw in waves of psychedelic lead guitar. Utterly fantastic, and utterly mandatory, they stole the show.

I say stole, since I was here principally to see The Wounded Kings play not only material from their new album, the excellent In the Chapel of the Black Hand, but also to see them play with their new singer, Sharie Neyland, for the first time. Unfortunately, the first 15 minutes or so of the set were marred by a technical hiccup with Sharie’s vocals rendering them waif-like beneath the crushing menace and desolation of the guitars. The vocals are genuinely an integral element to their sound and to be without them seriously hampered my enjoyment of the opening, which was a real shame, but once the sound guy pulled his finger out and the vocals rang out above the murk, the set was a real treat to behold. Sticking to material from the 2011 album, it was generally a very strong performance and I’d seriously recommend catching them in London at the end of the month. That being said – and it really pains me to say it – the band’s previous incarnation was a stronger live act, for me. George Birch had a more commanding presence about him and really shone on stage, rising almost effortlessly to the occasion. The new line-up has time to grow together and they surely will, but Sharie could really do with loosening up a bit and settling in to the performance.

It’s been a good week for death, doom and despair in Birmingham. Long may it continue.

Your work is not an easy and commercial one, I know that the critics are very intrigued by it. I also know that there are people that didn’t like it. Why do you think there is this polarization of attitudes to your music?

Otrebor/Botanist: No matter how bad something is, someone will like it. No matter how good something is, someone will hate it. This duality is a fundamental force that encourages my work… and it sums up the response to the initial Botanist album. “The vocals are great.” “The vocals are terrible.” “It’s a new species of extreme music.” “It’s not metal.” “It’s black metal, but not metal.” “It’s genius.” “It’s more interesting than good.” “Otrebor’s quite a drummer.” “The drums are terrible.” Every one of these statements are valid and I agree with all of them.

It has been a very long time since I have listened to an album so astonishing, weird, strong. Can you explain the concept behind it? What is Botanist? Is he just a tool in the “hands” of the Verdant Realm or is he like the promoter of this upcoming revolution?

The songs of Botanist are told from the perspective of The Botanist, a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away from Humanity and its crimes against Nature as possible. In his sanctuary of fantasy and wonder, which he calls the Verdant Realm, he surrounds himself with plants and flowers, finding solace in the company of the Natural world, and envisioning the destruction of man. There, seated upon his throne of Veltheimia, The Botanist awaits the day when humans will either die or kill each other off, which will allow plants to make the Earth green once again.

The next Botanist release, “III: Doom in Bloom,” will further develop Azalea, the entity introduced in Botanist “I: The Suicide Tree,” as the dominant voice that directs The Botanist’s actions to bring about the floral apocalypse.

I’ve read that at first Botanist was built to be a grindcore project and not a black metal one-man band. The very short tracks, the Grind attitude of your way of playing, the role of the dulcimer in your music: did all these features come from your first ideas? Why the change in direction?

The initial idea was to try to make Botanist a minimalist grindcore band, with just two live members doing guitars, vocals and drums. That no one appeared to complete the band seemed like a sign to finally let go of much frustration at not being able to create music at a pace that is natural for me, and Botanist suddenly seemed like the creative savior to that problem. Suddenly, the limitation of heavy, aggressive music obligatorily being guitar-driven was no longer a prerequisite. Anything could be done, as there was no one else to answer to — only the norms that were of interest would be respected. When Botanist became a one-man project, the attachment to making grind was no longer of particular note, but the plan to record short, intense songs in a semi-stream-of-consciousness way, using only drums and hammer dulcimer, was a theme that I wanted to stick to, not really knowing how the end result would be, nor expecting that end result to be one way or another.

Your music is definitely new, but not avant-garde. What are the feelings about your creation? Do you feel like a renovator of the black metal aesthetic (perhaps changing the old Man/Nature relationship that we find in black metal)?

I think it would be more interesting to hear your thoughts on how you see Botanist renovating black metal’s Man/Nature relationship, or the renovation of the black metal aesthetic. I have no profound statement on this topic. While much spiritual inspiration was derived from the notion of Nature worship and the channeling of music that I am impassioned with through instruments whose voices feel as if they are a conduit from something deep inside me, Botanist “I / II” is more like the closest representation possible (at the time) of what it’s like being inside my head, not a concerted effort to be avant-garde.

The creation of the albums, and all Botanist work since recording began, is partially a conscious effort, but it is also a partial result of something like summoning. I get this sense because it’s often that I don’t know where Botanist’s music really came from when I listen to it after it’s been recorded… That there’s something simultaneously familiar and foreign about it. The process is something like the musical equivalent of automatic writing, and that subconscious force is “The Botanist.”

In a similar way, I am channeling whatever elements that draw me to black metal, and that I hear in the black metal that I enjoy, through the music of Botanist. Your question appears to be asking for an answer from a conscious, mental, analytical, calculated frame of mind, but the narrative of the albums’ creation is more of a visceral one. While I did feel that in some way what I was doing had never been done before, that wasn’t the driving reason to do it. It was done simply because there was an inner need to do it.
With that said, I do recognize that in its own way, Botanist is a polarizing act within the black metal scene, something that is apparent a mere half-year since the debut album’s release. It will be interesting to see if a similar polarization occurs after the doom-minded second release is made public.

You said that you would like to know more about my vision of the black metal aesthetic and the Man/Nature relationship in Botanist. When i talk about aesthetics in black metal, I refer to something in sound that is referring directly to Nature, without any kind of mediation. It’s just a single little element in music, not a big and immediately intelligible one, the key to understand the work. That’s connected to the relationship of submission of Man to the primordial beauty of Nature, an entity so beautiful to appear violent in this being too. The feeling of loss facing her phenomena. Despite some kinds of metal genres’ worshipping the deconstruction of life, black metal aims to solve and to have an experience of something that can be called true life.

Yes, some do, but I think you’re being selective. However, I also connect more with the ones who, as you describe, seek to “submit man to the primordial beauty of Nature.” However, although I recognize how Nature can be categorized as “violent” (I recently read a quote by Jacques Cousteau who said something like how civilized society abhors cruelty and violence, but Nature favors the most violent, the most cruel.) There is truth in that, but I would argue that cruelty has nothing to do in Nature, but rather is a human trait, a human moralistic judgement and therefore, if that quote was in fact accurate, Cousteau was measuring Nature’s actions by human standards, which I am not so quick to agree with.

Back to Botanist, the notion on Nature’s violence is not the focus. Rather, it is a concept of The Botanist who seeks complete peace and harmony, the perfect harmony of Nature, which he envisions with a world absent of the human presence. He is open to this goal by any means possible, which includes true violence (the human kind of violence… which isn’t even necessary for him to act out, as he sees humans dying or killing each other off without his help anyway), and extends to his perception that Nature is fighting back against its oppressor.

There is Man on one side, and Nature on the other. Through her manifestations, phenomena and merciless cycle of life, Nature appears incomprehensible to Man. And this feature causes Man to feel inferior and not part of the world, searching for its primordial status as a human being just to feel again the right embodiment of “Human Being.” Nature is perfect, is inspiration, something that men imitate to create art in all its forms (architecture, painting and so on), and men is searching for this perfection. So in black metal there is the man that talks about Nature as something superior, something to respect and to worship as a primordial “god.”

In your case you show Nature’s point of view, it’s Nature that denies life to Man. Your clinical and feelingless (not in a bad sense) musical approach shows that Nature is something that has no feeling. You cut away conventional beauty to create something so concrete that is very hard to judge and to discuss upon. “That’s Nature, nothing more nothing less.”

Thank you. I think there is indeed some parallelism between the concepts you describe here and the concepts in Botanist. Part of the reason the lyrics deal largely with scientific botanical terms is in an effort to somehow separate Nature with mankind’s perception of Nature. This one is a little harder to explain, because botanical terminology is of course just an invention of man to qualify and quantify what you were talking about before, about how Nature is not comprehensible to Man. However, the way these words are used in Botanist’s context is rather as an adulation of what The Botanist identifies as the divine, the unknowable through comprehensible terms, the paradoxical effort to quantify the infinite — all of which is presented in a way that removes the human presence in Nature as much as possible. Perhaps it is this area where those who qualify Botanist’s music as “emotionless” comes from?

What do you think of black metal?  Why is there so much creativity in the scene? Why black metal in particular?A genre always considered conservative. It is crazy to think how the genre has evolved since the founding fathers first laid down the blueprints.

Black metal indeed seemed highly enamored with being “ancient” for quite some time. Of course, “ancient” to this relatively new style of music meant that if a band in 2001’s music went back to 1988, it was “ancient” and therefore by default more legitimate than any newer band’s work. It was thanks to this illusion of “ancient”ness that greatly contributed to a band like Nargaroth’s ability to rise to cult stardom. If your stuff purportedly dated back to Celtic Frost’s heyday, then you were somehow as legitimate, regardless of what your music actually sounded like.

Black metal as a whole seemed to lose some creative steam shortly past the turn of the millennium. It seemed like generic, rehashed material by “me too” bands with unfocused, unoriginal, half-assed recorded ideas was becoming more of the norm. In that sense, black metal had become the new DIY punk. Maybe it was how the sense of apocalypse that the turn of the millennium would bring never happened, and the black metal collective consciousness had lost a sense of urgency to drive it to create music in the way that had been evolving through the ‘90s. There was a need for a new creative direction, and the scene hadn’t found it yet.

While in some circles, the rules of the definition of black metal are still highly conservative and strict, this seems to be more of a thing of the past. Since the lull described above, something occurred in which black metal embraced artistic, creative values in composition, sound and philosophy in a more widespread group of musicians who saw what the expanding realm of possibility that the genre had to offer as an excellent medium to express higher, yet still outsider, art. While there are still black metal albums that are all about Satan, safely channel Darkthrone, or are still hung up with Hellhammer (and such efforts still have their place), the genre has moved past only that and into new territories. The result is that now the word “art” is applied by those talking about black metal in general in a more serious, literal definition of creative thought and work in association with the genre, as opposed to before, when the word “art” would soon be followed by the word “exclusively” in a trite, rehashed sentence that “me too” bands would use to attempt to seem as elite and uncompromising (read: unoriginal and uncreative) as the bands they were mimicking. In case you don’t know what I mean, consider all the bands that recycled the sentence “(insert band name) plays (insert goofy, contrived descriptor) art exclusively!”

The result of this creative shift in consciousness and opinion on black metal can be measured in terms of the coverage it gets in press, and the scope of people that are interested or even aware of black metal’s existence. Public interest in black metal is becoming more and more distanced from being enamored by a bunch of Scandinavian kids committing arson and murder, and more with what is actually being made artistically… although the sideshow still persists.

So who do you see as representing the pinnacle of the black metal movement today?

The Ruins of Beverast is currently making the best black metal I can think of, and it’s all the product of one person, Meilenwald, whose every band that he’s been involved in (Nagelfar, Truppensturm, Kermania, and others I haven’t heard yet) has been genius in its own way. Meilenwald is probably my favorite single metal musician. I very much appreciate how he radically changes the sound of his project from album to album, yet ties it together with his strong, unique signatures. Following up the debut Beverast with the ultra lo-fi “Rain Upon the Impure,” making you dig through the sonic and visual fields that make up the album, to behold incredible compositions and oceans of sound was a masterful move. Just the variety of vocal deliveries on the latest, third Ruins of Beverast album alone is far beyond anything I could dream of doing. I just got the collection album “Enchanted by Gravemould,” and it’s not surprsingly one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.

A monster metal musician unmasked.  An album four years in the making.  Sam Bean (ex-The Berzerker, ex-Mithras) waxes poetic on the injustices of the extreme music industry and the science of metal solitude.  Bean‘s solo project calls on the services of some of the most well-respected musicians in HRH’s secret cabinet.

With an exclusive full-streaming of The Senseless‘s “The Floating World” [due February 18th] below.

“I needed to come up with a band name quick.”

———————————

Who is the Senseless?

Me! Me, me, me, me, me! Sam Bean, ex-Berzerker/ex-Mithras and general metal band whore. I did the entire first album, but on “The Floating World,” I was joined by Leon Macey from Mithras.

When and why was The Senseless born?

In 2007, I had just finished an especially acrimonious Berzerker tour with a French band called ‘Happy Face’ and sent their manager my demos. Turns out he worked for the European branch of Anticulture Records, and he signed me. I needed to come up with a band name quick, and I pounded out the debut album “In the Realm of the Senseless” and that was the start of it.

Can you tell about your experiences leading up to- and being in The Berzerker?

I don’t have much pre-Berzerker history. I played once live, doing Morbid Angel’s “Visions from the Darkside” during a charity event.

I joined The Berzerker because my flatmates were tired of me blasting guitar all day and suggested I join a band in order to play somewhere else! I put a bunch of handwritten ads in stores, saying I was a metal guitarist who liked playing fast, and Luke from The Berzerker was the only one who answered. He’d just returned from the UK where he’d been offered a deal with Earache Records, and I was the only guitarist left in town who’d work with him.

I was onboard from 1999, and my fulltime involvement wound down in 2005 because I saw no life in it for me. There was no camaraderie, no money, and we were totally anonymous [because we wore monster masks]. I was running around the world on next to no money, and Earache didn’t give a fuck about us. I remember Gary [the drummer] had his foot broken one week before the end of a US tour. We got a screaming phone call from a promo chick cause word leaked, and promoters were worried about us pulling out. We had no money, no vehicle, were stuck in a swamp shack in Florida, and one of our guys was crippled. We had ten days to find a drummer for The Fastest Band in the World and train them to do a headline set.

I turned 27 that week. I was sleeping on a dog blanket on a concrete floor when it was my birthday, and I thought to hell with doing this. My label doesn’t give a shit if I live or die… I’m off. I think the last time I left the US, I had about half a dozen serious death-threats hanging over my head.

Is it difficult to play in bands where the music is mostly under the creative force of a single entity?

I’m an adult. I’m alright with some compromise.

With Berzerker, I was mostly grateful to get an opportunity to play metal at a level that literally no-one else in the country had achieved.

The tricky bits I’ve found isn’t so much the music, it’s the business side where bands self-sabotage…where a good band with a strong leader ends up going so insane trying to achieve perfection that they end up driving away people who can help them.

Your first The Senseless record “In the Realm of the Senseless” came four years ago and had a record label attached to it. The new record “The Floating World” has appearances by Akercocke’s Matt Wilcock, Evile’s Ol Drake, and Leon Macey from Mithras but struggled to find a label. Why?

The release of “In the Realm of the Senseless” was so incompetently handled that there was no way I would gift Anticulture Records another free body of work.

I spent over one thousand hours writing, recording, rehearsing it. I flew to Australia to mix it, drove halfway across England to master it. Negotiated a bidding war between album cover photographers. Spent a week doing artwork, a month of spare time creating online content, made a video for free. I did it all on my days off from a normal, stressful corporate job. I then absolved Anticulture from paying mechanicals, so they could budget for promotion, and handed them all this work with all these big names [Matt Wilcock from Akercocke, Ol Drake from Evile]. And they cocked it right up.

They lost their US distro. They gave away exclusive video rights and a few hundred pounds to stock my CD at Play.com, who carried only eight copies. The album sold out on the first day, and they never restocked. Christ, they even forgot I was on the label and forgot to invite me to their Christmas party!

Do you have theories on why “The Floating World” was difficult to sell?

Most of us are over thirty. We don’t play live. We don’t make deathcore. Our videoclips don’t have millions of views. The Facebook page doesn’t have thousands of hits. I don’t look particularly metal. You’ve really got to promote yourself to the point where you don’t need a record label to get a contract!

I didn’t get any meetings over it. I sent out about twenty or so mails and packages to labels and did not get a single reply. All I wanted a label for was to take care of distribution and promotion, because I’ve got my own life to live.

What is the current state of the record industry from an artists’ perspective?

The industry is suffering. Labels are doing these 360-degree deals, ensuring the artist never makes a cent, then wondering why bands pack it in by the third album.

The internet is forcing musicians to have the skills to run their own businesses before any labels show up. It’s getting to the point where bands would ask, “What’s the point of signing to you anyway? We book our own shows, do our own merch, and distribute our own music. What do we need you for?”

Has there ever been a time in your career when musicians could actually prosper and live?

Almost everyone I know in metal bands makes nothing. Metal just has that demographic that everyone downloads everything illegally. On the other hand, my old housemate plays in Wolfmother, and he makes a good living. I know people in the electronic scene – running labels, DJing – and doing really well.

Until 2005, it was possible to make something of a living doing extreme metal. I think with The Berzerker, if we wanted to go on the road for eight months, we could have done it for a living. But what sort of life is that? Twelve to fifteen-hour days, living on a bus, eating pizza constantly… bollocks! There’s no safety net, and the health risks you endure over a prolonged period isn’t worth it .

How long has the “The Floating World” been finished? Why have you waited to release it?

It was mixed and mastered by January 2011. But waiting to release it was no masterstroke. I finished it and went, phew. At that exact point, I needed a big life change. I had been in England for seven years, through a load of failed friendships/relationships and working an extremely stressful job. I contacted everyone in the music industry who said they’d give me assistance with the album, sending CDs out to them, and didn’t so much as get a “thanks for sending the CD. “

It felt like music was a black hole, and I was just dreading anything related to it. My nervous system equated it with losing friends, wealth, time. I just couldn’t do it. So I quit my job, packed up my life in England, traveled for a few months.  Now I’m back in Australia, re-energised enough to go ahead and release this!

What songwriting techniques were used in composing this album?

Every song turns up differently.  Sometimes I get an idea for a tune when I’m working, and then I’ll take time to get it out of my head. I record a lot of riffs and arrange them; they’re the tracks that take a few years.

I also try to play a lot of mainstream music. Like, I’ll work out the piano line to a Massive Attack song and figure out how to trem pick it, or with U2 or Depeche Mode. If you do that on a distorted detuned brutal guitar suddenly another world of progressions opens up that metal doesn’t touch. I also learn old Commodore 64 songs on guitar, and that just gives you another massive music lesson.

If I need to write something vicious and misanthropic and dripping with hate, I watch Big Brother for a week and that usually does it. Most of the time I just get a melody and try and write a song around it. I think there’s a lot to be said for getting out of your own way and letting your unconscious do most of the work.

How did you record?

I demoed the songs against click tracks, and we rehearsed for two years to get them up to speed. Leon [Macey] has a studio setup in his basement, so he recorded drums and FTP’d me the files. I have a POD XT and did the entire guitar recording onto a laptop in my living room and arranged everything. I did overdubs with a small Marshall Practice amp miked up with a Shure SM-58.

The things I was driving for was flexibility, the ability to take time and evolve things. My recording philosophy is leftover from my time in Berzerker, where we mistrusted everyone and did as much ourselves as possible. God bless POD XTs. You can get a better guitar sound with some rare producers, but there’s a ten-grand abyss you have to cross if you want to get there.

How would you describe “The Floating World,” musically?

Musically, it’s progressive grind, heavy mental. Extreme metal that isn’t scared of being happy. Each song is a different style. Every song is a stand-out ass-kicker, and the album is so far ahead of its time I should have delayed it by another two years.

It doesn’t seem experimental to me, but I like different sounds, stuff that just takes you totally unawares, and I’ve always felt that that’s one of extreme metal’s primary purposes. To be the musician that’s brave enough to just to mess with your ears and come at you where you’re not looking.

Why do you think that so many metal bands’ music is written and recorded by a single person? The riffs are more complicated than most genres of music, yet the responsibility seems to often boil down to one person.

Oh, there’s a simple reason – because you can’t jam casually and come up with a death metal song. Not a good one, anyway. It’s the same reason that orchestras don’t jam and come up with a new movement. It’s near impossible to write involved, deliberate, dynamic, and complicated music democratically.

It’s not a philosophy, or being introspective, it’s that you get a very detailed vision of a very weird song, and writing it yourself is the only way to get that vision out of your head.

What do you do in your personal life?

For work, I look after mainframe systems. Most of my time is spent traveling, cooking, doing sport, and beating the ever-loving shit out of my guitar. I prefer surfing and adventure, hanging out with positive people doing brave things.  Metal isn’t my life. Mostly, I listen to other stuff. Old grunge, triphop, soundtracks, opera. M.I.A.  The Libertines. Melt Banana. Metal is music that I love to play and listen to, but I never identified myself by my tastes.

Do you have advice for aspiring metal musicians? Would you tell them to go for it or to be very careful about what they wish for?

If you’re young, go for it. Being in a band full-time is a young person’s lifestyle, it’s like an extension of high school. You need to be young to handle the lack of sleep and food that comes with touring.

The three biggest bits of advice I have are:

1. BE DIFFERENT. If you are doing something different from everyone else then you’ve effectively reduced your competition.

2. PLAY OVERSEAS. You get more profile and exposure playing one international show than playing a dozen local ones of the same size. Don’t wait for booking agents to pick you up. You can play locally until all the hipsters love you and put off playing overseas until that ill-defined moment when you all think you’re good enough, but your career only BEGINS once you’ve played that first overseas show.

3. MAKE YOUR MONEY OUTSIDE METAL. Otherwise you’re always going to compromise your music. The industry loves their musicians poor. If you’ve got your own money, if you start a tour and the booking agents decide to fuck you, then you’ve always got the option to leave.

What is the best way to support a metal musician/band that you like?

Buy their albums! I could do albums like this once a year if people bought them, I’m sure the same goes for many other musicians. Another way is to contact them. Bands are available with social media these days, and sometimes just hearing from an appreciative fan can fire you up to make more music.

Where can people get “The Floating World”?

From February 18th, it’ll be available worldwide on iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and all major digital retailers. If in doubt, head to www.thesenseless.com.

Stream the album here:

Old Funeral

The Slayer Mag Diaries may just be the finest book ever published on heavy metal. Most readers will be drawn to it as a document of the crucial years in Black Metal history: the infamous issues 9 & 10 of Slayer Zine are as important a monument of the Norwegian scene as any album, while the memoirs of author Metalion, long-time zine-writer and close friend of Euronymous, Dead and Varg, give a moving account of the rise and fall of the scene’s key players.

But the book (and the zine) have a lot more to offer than that. They are the only real document of the thriving Death Metal scourge that covered Norway before the explosion of Black Metal. Laced in among interviews with Bolt Thrower and Nihilist are bits are pieces on local bands, now all but forgotten, whose members would go on to greater fame in the Black Metal scene. Today this Death Metal scene survives as little more than a footnote in the historical conscience of metal fans. Until the dawn of file-sharing, the many demos from this scene were virtually impossible to get hold of, and would they be worth it if you did? These were only kids, after all – how good could they be?

Darkthrone in 1988

Reading Slayer, though, you soon find yourself infected with the excitement that Metalion and his more famous friends felt about this stuff. At the time, this was the new extreme metal. Reading Euronymous’ praise for bands like Balvaz made me wonder what I was missing out on. If things had turned out differently, would the scene have produced anything else on the level of Soulside Journey?

For the last few months I’ve been collecting every release from Death Metal bands whose members would go on to play a part in the Norwegian Black Metal scene. It’s a wildly varied bunch, and often pretty strange. Few of the bands may have had the knack of writing songs as memorable as their American idols, but the music is never boring, and never just a facsimile of another band’s sound. In the end I found it easy to put together a compilation of my favourite songs from each band in the scene, which you’ll find below. Treat it as a base for wider exploration, a museum-like exhibition, or just a source of cynicism-free, Bermuda shorts-hating Death Metal.

ENTER THE CHIMERA DIMENSION

1. Intro: Laudate Dominum (from Green Carnation’s demo)

2. Amputation – Heavenly Grace (from the 1990 demo Slaughtered in the Arms of God). An early home for Abbath and Demonaz of Immortal, Amputation started off as Morbid Angel acolytes and then, on this second demo, found a deeper, more brutal sound. The atmosphere may be a million miles away from Immortal, but the riffs and stop-start drumming on ‘Heavenly Grace’ is eerily reminiscent of ‘Unholy Forces of Evil’ from the Immortal debut.

Amputation

3. Morbid – From the Dark (from the 1987 demo December Moon). Evil thrashing death fronted by the venerated Dead, later of Mayhem. A Swedish band, admittedly, but with close ties (and obvious importance) to the Norwegian Black Metal scene.

4. Mortem – Nightmare (from the 1989 demo Slow Death). Hellhammer (Mayhem, Arcturus) and Sverd (Arcturus) dished out one demo of abrupt and pithy Death Metal before going on to greater things. Watch out for those vocals!

5. Old Funeral – Devoured Carcass (from the 1991 EP Devoured Carcass). The most professional (and most American) sounding band from the scene, Old Funeral present the strange prospect of Varg and Demonaz pairing up on guitars, with Abbath on bass and vocals. Oddly reminiscent of Suffocation, whose emerged in the New York scene at roughly the same time.

6. Balvaz – Blemish (from the 1991 self-titled EP). Probably the only Norwegian extreme metal band to take inspiration from UK comedy Blackadder (see their song ‘Contrafibularities’), Balvaz played weird Death Metal full of bright, blues-tinged melody. A favourite of Euronymous’, Balvaz’ members went on to play in Kampfar and Cadaver (Inc.)

7. Cadaver – Twisted Collapse (from the 1989 demo Abnormal Deformity). Included here merely for historical sake, Cadaver were one of only a few bands who continued to play Death Metal long after the explosion of Black Metal. Carl-Michael Eide would eventually play in this band, but not for another decade.

8. Thou Shalt Suffer – Chimera Dimension (from the 1991 demo Into the Woods of Belial). The only band to rival Old Funeral’s claim to an all-star line-up, TSS was not only the first stomping ground of Ihsahn and Samoth, but also boasted Ildjarn on bass – a man few could imagine playing technical death metal. TSS do a fine job of balancing technicality and atmosphere, with some great synth-work from Ihsahn. As with Amputation, you can just about see the link between this band and the earliest work of its successor, Emperor.

Thou Shalt Suffer

9. Darkthrone – The Watchtower (from the 1989 Cromlech demo). This is a great version of a favourite from Soulside Journey, with vocals that are actually a lot closer to the later Black Metal style. Untouchable as ever.

10. Green Carnation – Corpus Christi (from the 1991 demo Hallucinations of Despair). Green Carnation is the life-long band of Tchort, bassist on Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse. This stuff is a far cry from the progressive gothic metal that would follow: instead we get some tight, fairly technical fare with disgustingly distorted vocals.

11. Phobia – The Last Settlement of Ragnarok (from the 1991 demo Feverish Convulsions). Enslaved main-men Grutle and Ivar started out playing funereal, synth-drenched Death Metal with Phobia. The familiar Viking themes are there, as is that Hordanes Land-ish atmosphere. Nasty production but well worth sticking with.

12. Embryonic – The Land of the Lost Souls (from the 1990 demo of the same name). Though essentially just an earlier incarnation of Thou Shalt Suffer, Embryonic had a very different sound, leaning at a more chugging, groove-based angle.

13. Molested – Forlorn as a Mist of Grief (from the 1993 demo Unborn Woods in Doom). While one member would go on to form Borknagar, the rest of Molested had the good sense to stick with their uncompromisingly dark and twisted Death Metal. The guitars on this demo are ridiculously downtuned and virtually indecipherable, despite the decent production. Later releases offered a somewhat more melodic approach, but were still bowel-meltingly heavy. An undeservedly neglected band.

THERE’S THAT LINK AGAIN

Morbid

“I cry into my pillow each night wishing I could write music like this.” – Toby Driver on Mario Diaz de Leon

When one’s all-time favourite composer touts another as “flawless”, you tend to sit up and take notice; so said Toby Driver on Mario Diaz de Leon’s Enter Houses Of (2009) in Tzadik’s Artist for Artist feature. In particular, he hailed Diaz de Leon’s ability to blur the lines between acoustic, classical instrumentation and ear-shattering blasts of power electronics and processed synthesizers, melting them down together in a breathtaking and highly calculated brew of organic chamber jazz chaos.

However, as it is generally not the done thing for avant-garde contemporary classical composers to make the same noises ever again, with this year’s Hypnos Diaz de Leon has taken a decidedly different direction. The album is a piece solely for synthesisers and guitars, although admittedly it is not easy to discern whether the heavy, low rumbles are one or the other.

And what a delirious, hallucinatory, hypnotic journey it is. Like Philip Glass dabbling in trance music, opener ‘Oneirogen’, which can be sampled along with a video below, surges forth powered by intricately arpeggiated synths, tossing the listener around in relentless bursts of colour. The inhuman programming brings a great intensity, flinging the melodies forward at speeds beyond even the most dexterous pianists. From here, it’s clear that Hypnos is constructed of two distinct tones: one dense and dark, the other light and airy. The guitars and electronics will switch places between these roles at whim, yet both sections are so processed and contorted that they often appear indistinguishable.

It’s this unpredictable interplay that makes Hypnos such a thrill and every composition as vital as the next, a rarely seen trait among the noisier echelons of electronic music. ‘Consumed’ and ‘Hypnocaust’ carry a slow, sinister and doom-like flavour, pierced by industrialised shrieks and harsh distortion. Then ‘Cinerum’ and ‘Faithless’ evoke the kind of mournful walls of sound more familiar to Velvet Cacoon, with the incessant whirr of the arpeggios replacing the need for any percussion or beat and driving the pieces on like a hell-bound freight train. A whispered vocoder joins the symphony in the latter of these two tracks, developing from a laconic sigh into a scorching black metal screech.

Indeed, the penultimate piece, ‘Kukulkan’, betrays Diaz de Leon’s debt to extreme metal. Here, guitars can be identified for the first time, plucking away atonally over a pulsating synth drone until they summon the strength to charge ahead in a frenzied tremolo reminiscent of Locrian and Blazebirth Hall equally. The lilting melodies are then gradually warped beneath the ambient haze to the point of a bleak heaviness worthy of dronemasters SunnO))). This exhausting trip of hallucinations, day dreams and nightmares is closed by ‘Dissolution’, a haunting fragment of a melody that will have you splayed out in ecstasy across the floor of your dungeon.

Hypnos hasn’t left rotation in days and will continue to relinquish many treasures for years to come. Drawing upon a wealth of influences from across the classical tradition, electronic and ambient spheres, and heavy metal alike, this is a must-hear for any enthusiast of left-field music. Based purely on the amount of enjoyment I have absorbed from this album, I would hazard to say that this will be one of 2012’s finest.

Hypnos was released on January 24 via Shinkoyo. It’s also available on iTunes and Amazon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MARIO DIAZ DE LEON
SOUNDCLOUD
CONNECT

For anyone who’s still curious, here are my listening choices for the last three weeks. This will be the last of these posts. The whole list thing is too strict a format for proper discussion of music, so fuck it. Besides, I’ve got quite a nifty surprise up my sleeve to put the finishing touches to, so all you death metal-loving lurkers, keep an eye out for that.

Apologies for the minimal comment. I’m house-bound with a stupidly high fever and the world’s looking a little peculiar. Those albums that deserve a post of their own will be sure to get one eventually.

Week 2

All I’ll say is, if you’ve missed either the Craft or the Tenhi albums, both of which came out too late in 2011 to make any decent website’s end-of-year lists, you need to fix that now. The Tenhi is beautiful and terrifying, exactly the kind of music you might imagine from an album with that cover, and the Craft (like the last Taake) is proof that black metal can stay true to its form without any risk of stagnating.

Tenhi – Saivo

Craft – Void

Gigan – Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes

Bjork – Biophilia

Dark Angel – Darkness Descends

Obituary – Slowly We Rot

Hellveto – Zmierzch

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Week 3

The first of many weeks devoted to catching up on the great finds of my LURKER brethren. I’m pleased to be able to say that every one of these records is fantastic. Follow the links to read the original articles.

Terzij de Horde & Starve – A Chosen Hollow N.B. Both sides of this split are awesome, and complement each other admirably. Ignore Starve at your peril.

Asva – Presences of Absences

Saturnalia Temple – Aion of Drakon

Wildernessking – The Writing of Gods in the Sand

Demdike Stare – Elemental

Kayo Dot – Gamma Knife

Timeghoul – demos

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Week 4

I spent most of this week at my parents house, without a working computer or mp3 player, and with only a CD player at my disposal. A delve through my old music collection turned up a few great surprises, though.

Merciless – The Awakening

Day Without Dawn – Understanding Consequences

The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute, Amputechture, The Bedlam in Goliath

Deep Purple – Shades of Deep Purple

King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King

In the end, Season of Mist picked up the torch and could there be a better fit? The label’s stalwart acts, Mayhem and Deathspell Omega, have already done much to further the extreme metal experience, and Dodecahedron fall neatly in line with this school of volatile experimentation. It’s a comparison bound to crop up more than once within the literary cesspit of what is known as music journalism, but it’s also unavoidable. No other band has come close to scraping the same heights – until now.

The album needs to be contemplated in its entirety to get a sense of what Dodecahedron are truly capable of. From its opening moments on ‘Allfather’, angular dissonance and shunting rhythms flood the air, drowning the listener in nightmarish guitar abstraction. The music seems to be the sworn enemy of melody, as any chances for a wholesome tone are quickly snuffed by a flattened note here, a jarring squeal there. Devoid of power-chord primitivism and the shackles of melodic convention, the possibilities become endless.

Ok, so this approach is nothing new – Calculating Infinity still whispers in my ear when listening to Paracletus – but it is in those fleeting moments when the band summons an actual, bona fide tune from the surrounding chaos that Dodecahedron triumphs. Sometimes even a dark beauty emerges between the ritual hums of ‘Vanitas’ and the cinematic composition of the ‘View From Hverfell’ trilogy, the series that ends the album. But be warned: Whenever you find yourself lost in atmospheric haze or locked in a head-bang along to an almighty riff, remember that Dodecahedron has as many faces as its namesake. It’s treacherous, in league with the Dark Lord, and Pandemonium always teeters on the horizon. And it will destroy you.

Dodecahedron was released globally today (January 24). Order from their official website or through Season of Mist. There is a full stream available to check out until January 27.