Blut aus Nord - Lovecraftian Echoes (2022)

Country: France
Style: Atmospheric Black Metal/Dark Ambient
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 May 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia | YouTube

I don't believe I've heard Blut aus Nord before, but I'm fascinated now, because this is unlike what I expected to hear from something labeled atmospheric black metal. Stereogum ranked this as the Best Metal Album of 2022, while Pop Matters and Invisible Oranges included the same band's new album for 2022, Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses, in their end of year lists too. I checked that out and it's quite the sonic experience, but decided to review this one because of that number one status and because it's not the typical album in almost any regard.

For a start, it's not their new album because it's a compilation, but not of tracks previously issued on a variety of back catalogue items, as you might expect. The six tracks on offer are all relatively new, the oldest dating back to April 2021 and the newest from February 2022, so it's definitely last year's scope, and they were previously released to a subscriber-only forum called Order of Outer Sounds, so haven't been widely heard. Not that an album this unusual is going to be widely heard anyway, but you get the point. So, disclaimers aside, it's a new album in almost every sense, even if it isn't "the new Blut aus Nord" album, which is worth me diving into it.

This is definitely sourced in black metal, that recognisable wall of sound pivotal to the black metal experience, and it's dripping with atmosphere, but this is a long way from the typical atmospheric black metal bands out there, like Saor or Wolves in the Throne Room. It's dark and haunting and I find it easy to imagine as ambient but not of our dimension. To play into the Lovecraftian themes I see riddled throughout their work, this is the music of the spheres when they're occupied by elder gods. It's vast but it's claustrophobic and it pulls at our sanity. It's dangerously beautiful stuff, an enticing nightmare conjured out of sound.

As you might imagine, it's highly unorthodox and worthy of comparison to dark ambient designers of sound like Coil, Lustmord and Current 93 just as to anything in the black metal genre, even if we shimmy way over to the edge to avant-garde outfits like Oranssi Pazuzu or Neptunian Maximalism. As these are clearly soundscapes more than they are songs, with any vocals submerged so deeply that they might be something else entirely, it wouldn't be unfair to throw out comparisons to such powerelectronics legends as Merzbow either. It's clearly music to read about in both Kerrang! and Wire and that's always the most interesting music.

Nyarlathotep opens things up in uncompromising fashion and it's a complex and fascinating track that washes over us like a waterfall of tentacles with razorblade suckers, but Hypnos, which keeps on in the same vein, adds another level. Suddenly, we've become the waterfall and the six minute descent is not simply through air. There are undefinable creatures sharing this space with us and they're shrugging o our presence because we aren't worthy of their notice. This is a majestic piece of music and an evocative one, but it's also one I'm wary of visualising because I think it would give me motion sickness, especially late on when things get more frantic and jazzy.

These six tracks progress in such a consistent fashion, one flowing into the next, so it's difficult to see this in any way other than a single thirty-five minute composition, Maybe there's more in the way of guttural churning in The Tomb or The Abyss Between the Stars, but I lost track. I threw this on headphones because my speakers simply weren't doing it justice and let the album flood over me. After a couple of times through and a revisit to a couple of tracks to try to discern what they'd provide in isolation, I actually took a break to come to terms with the enormity of this music.

It's absolutely not going to be for everyone. This would sound awful on FM radio. It requires a slice of dedicated time, a good pair of headphones and an open mind. Switching the lights off ought to help too. If you have all of that ready, give this a go and see if it'll blow your mind too.

And, if it does, like me, you can dive into what else the band has been up to over the years, as they aren't remotely new. Blut aus Nord was formed back in 1994 in Normandy, France, initially as a one man project for Vindsval, still their vocalist and guitarist. W. D. Feld joined on drums and a variety of electronic contributions, not just keyboards, a year later and Ghöst added bass in 2003. Unless I miscounted, this comes after their fourteenth studio album as a kinda sorta fifteenth, and I see an array of EPs in there too. The've been busy and, based on these two 2022 albums, I'm eager to see where this easy listening for elder gods sound came from.

Katharos XIII - Palindrome (2019)

Country: Romania
Style: Black/Doom Metal, Dark Jazz
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives

I have no idea how to describe what Katharos XIII do, but I'm thankful that I'm struggling with that task now because it means that I've finally found them. I wasn't particularly looking for them but I'm always looking for the sort of music that I've never heard before and they're a great example. They really are an answer to questions you don't know you have.

I came upon them described as black/doom metal and it seems that they moved into that from depressive black metal, which really isn't light years away. However, if you imagine black/doom metal, you're not likely to imagine this. It's certainly not the bastard child of Mayhem and Candlemass and it's not remotely like other black/doom bands I've heard, like Barathrum.

I was sold on the album just listening to the bass of Hanos-Puskai Péter at the beginning of the opening song, Vidma, because it's dark and doomy but it has a warm and inviting tone. It's like telling us that things are going to be deadly but come on in anyway, because the water's warm. Then the ethereal voice of Manuela Marchis takes over, soft and melodic but always with power, like Tori Amos if her cover of Slayer's Raining Blood had been her biggest hit. Drummer Sabat refuses to play the expected rhythms, almost improvising over the other musicians. And then...

And then, three minutes in, it shifts from folky jazz into somewhere utterly unique. It's not just the eruption into black metal shrieks, presumably the work of the guitarist and keyboardist who goes only by F., over an achingly low and slow backdrop of exquisite doom, it's the fact that it's accompanied by a saxophone soloing over the whole thing. Yeah, you heard me. Except that the result is much better than you're currently imagining. It's courtesy of Alex Iovan who's the tenor saxophonist in Katharos XIII, adding an enticing and highly unusual element to their sound.

He's not the only one. A couple of minutes later, it all drops back into an ambient darkness, with jangling bells behind Marchis's haunting voice. I may be listening on Hallowe'en entirely by accident, but this sounds exactly like the house you don't want to trick or treat at, because there's no way you're going to leave. Her voice also splits into different tracks, that weave into something new, like a dark ambient take on Linda Perhacs where the abundant sky around us has fallen and everything's gone except whatever's grinning in the darkness in front of us.

Vidma is over far too quickly, even at eight minutes and change. It caught me so much by surprise that I hadn't quite grasped what was happening until it was done and I had to prepare myself for the next song. Instead, I went back to Vidma and listened to that a few times before moving onwards. That kept on happening too, as I had to fully devour To a Secret Voyage before I moved on to Caloian Voices and so on. By the time I got to Xavernah Glory, the last of the five tracks on offer which, between them, amount to almost an hour of running time, I'd been listening for most of a day.

And I'll be listening to this a lot more, including on headphones tonight in the wee hours with no distractions. There are a lot of parts that could slip easily into the background because they're so ambient, but that's deceptive because there's a lot going on even when it doesn't seem like it. The first couple of minutes of No Sun Swims Thundered fit that bill, but pay attention and they reveal their secrets. This song builds organically and incessantly to what I believe is a theremin solo. That's not a guitar effects pedal, right?

Katharos XIII are from Timișoara and this is their third studio album, with a demo and a split album with fellow Romanians Ordinul Negru to their name before it. Their Facebook page calls what they doom/black metal, but also dark jazz, a genre also known as doom jazz. How have I not heard of this before? It apparently grew out of a merger of film noir soundtracks and dark ambient music. I will be exploring. In the meantime, this is something the likes of which I've never heard before and I like that just because as much as because it's immersive and powerful stuff.

Just like the Ultima Radio album I reviewed earlier this week, this review may or may not help you understand whether it's for you or not. Just check out Caloian Voices on YouTube. If it leaves you dry, this isn't your music. If it wows you the way it wowed me, you'll have found another new favourite band.

Sieghetnar - Gebirge (2019)

Country: Germany
Style: Ambient Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Jul 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives

I get a real kick watching genres grow and morph and especially merge with other genres that don't seem to make sense. Who would have thought that new age would work so well with funeral doom metal? Well, check out the one man project called Roaring Empyrean and see it work. Here's another: Sieghetnar, another one man project that plays ambient black metal, a concept that isn't new but which bemuses me every time because it shouldn't work.

If you haven't heard ambient black metal before, let me introduce you. Yes, we're talking black metal, with its blastbeats, shrieks and corpsepaint, not to mention its traditionally muddy production. And we're talking ambient, an attempt to discover the music in all sound, even if it occurs naturally with no orchestration. You know, Bathory meets Brian Eno, that completely obvious merging of styles.

What it really translates to is the wall of sound approach that often shows up in black metal, but without the dissonance or too many ominous overtones, rendered in long form and combined with quiet acoustic material and samples to create a sort of classical piece with rock instrumentation. Gebirge runs just short of three quarters of an hour, but it's still only one track with sections that are quiet or heavy but always melodic. Add in birds, fire and rain and we might grasp where all that light is coming from on the gorgeous cover, taken from Albert Bierstadt's 1868 painting of Yosemite Valley.

The man behind Sieghetnar is called Thorcraft and he's the entire show here, writing the material and playing all the instruments. He clearly keeps busy, not just because he's knocked out a dozen Sieghetnar albums, seven of them in the last five years, but also because he's also a black metal band called Harsgathyr, much of another called Todesrune, and a few more besides. What's more, he runs both Kristallblut Records and Nordsturm Productions, neither of which are restricted to his own material.

This is my first experience of his work and I'm impressed. This single track album runs along patiently but effectively. It's less cinematic than I might have expected but it's very evocative and immersive. I felt less like I was looking at the landscape Thorcraft aims to conjure up and more like I was in it, camping out and watching the scenery. Sure, I'm hearing those birds and that rain but there were points when I thought that I was smelling flowers too and I'm pretty sure my speakers only handle audio.

Interpreting a piece like this is highly individual, so I'll avoid too much of what I got out of it, because I'm pretty sure that you'll hear something else entirely. I will say, though, that Gebirge, which translates from the German as "mountains", played to me as both a passage of time, the mountains a backdrop to the weather that performs in front of it, and a mood piece, a set of reactions to that show of nature. Some of the most effective sections have a pastoral tone to them but it's becoming overwhelmed by something dark rolling in.

I liked this a lot and now have plenty more from Thorkraft to go and find. I see that the first Sieghetnar album featured vocals, but the rest have been entirely instrumental, except for some of the reissues. I like this without vocals, because I don't think they would have added anything, whatever style they were in, but think they would have detracted from the experience.