Condemner offers us the most bare-bones death metal possible. We hear only a straightforward guitar. Simple, slow battle drums that press on the same emphasis points of the guitar riff. Traditional death metal vocals round off the bare minimum arrangement, with the occasional higher-register growl doubling for demonic effect at tactical points.
41 CommentsTags: condemner, death metal
It is customary to begin a new year with the setting of goals towards accomplishment and growth in view of the experiences had during the previous period. The present writing aims at putting forth some works that may enrich the serious would-be Hessian in their struggle to embrace an ever more complete vision of reality. As Brett Stevens has pointed out, an interest in the occult is part and parcel of the Hessian outlook as he searches for logical patterns everywhere, not allowing himself to be circumscribed by any authority. Of necessity, this interest in the occult goes beyond Judeo-Christian conceptions, even if for historical reasons a poisoned landscape of Judaized misconceptions and moralistic admonitions has to be tread through or around. Mythos, its relevance to human psychology and possibility, must be embraced, and for it to be embraced, its import must be studied through pre-history and the whole of civilizations. While the scoffers will decry what they cannot allow themselves to rationally accept, they will remain in the grips of one or another mythos. Such is the curse of the atheist, the rationalist and those who belong to the democratic crowds. Allow mythos, vision, and hunger for life unite a distant past, the present and a distant future. The way is forward, paved by the billions of skulls of the meek who would inherit this planet, ascending to the heavens, beyond the stars and into far off galaxies.
10 CommentsTags: desecresy, Finnish Death Metal, friedrich nietzsche, the mortal horizon, towards nebulae
Coming back not with a reformulation or evolution of their sound but a deepening of their purpose, Gevurahel give us a new presentation of old and new compositions that fine tune their expression of satanic devotion. The musical style has been boiled down to essentials of unity and comprehensibility, letting the variation and exploration take place in a more controlled way. These designs are not random nor do they respond to a musical urge, but rather to an inner insistence upon necessity with respect to purpose. That is, the direct opposite of music for its own sake.
14 CommentsTags: Black Metal, gevurahel, occult, Satanism, Un nuevo amanecer satánico
Death Metal Underground is proud to host this interview between legendary writer D.A.R.G and Christopher from brilliant young band Ectovoid that have managed to stand far above the hordes of useless charlatans and trendhoppers with their brilliant release Dark Abstraction.
5 CommentsTags: Altars of Madness, dark abstraction, death metal, Demilich, ectovoid, Grave Miasma, Inner Death, interview, Mental Funeral, morbid angel
One of the greatest challenges of art linked to mystical practices its concern with being able to codify pathways to the inner experience that is intended to be facilated or transmitted. Nameless Therein have taken a reserved yet thematically rich path towards the accomplishment of such a feat by creating sinister musical vignettes. The compositions in question consist in arrangements for three clean-sound electric guitars, and which arrangements focus on enriching textures surrounding a clear thematic line. The character of the music is one that flirts with different sentiments, with its only constant being a vague sensation of weirdness that is accentuated by the quick evaporation of single pieces. The full effect can only be felt as they are played in succession, allowing their similarities, contrasts and particularities to accumulate in the short term memory, the unconscious and the body’s chemistry.
Codification refers to the placing into intelligible patterns a message that will be decoded and transformed by its receiving agent. The efficacy of art as a portal, as a catalyst, is rooted in its artistry, in its effective deepening or altering of the world. Relation to technique and craft is direct, but the evaluation of its efficacy is its totality, since it will be probably found that the most efficacious experiences are based on craft effectively codifying —thus channeling— the intended experience. Nameless Therein is heard here using each and every ounce of technique and craft of instrumentality and composition to this end, and there are no loose strings in this respect.
What at first seems like a limitation is indeed the source of efficacy as a retainer for evocative suggestions in aural form. Very short pieces form pictures in a stream that allows them their own personality while restraining from elaborating excessively, and so avoiding confinement of the listener’s individual experience. Like beautiful entrances to secluded roads in an enchantingly dark, pastoral setting, enticing first and bewitching after as the path grows beyond the composition, yet within the designs of the composer’s manipulative schemes. Sympathetic strings are pulled, and one hovers above, or is shifted out of position, but incompletely. Perception is rent asunder, but in wild streaks, singaling marks seen by a now disturbed awareness. These are doors opened for journeys that can only be taken in solitary, and which no art can complete: art is always a portal, never the experience.
The dense guitar arrangements here make very natural use of the properties of the instrument. Rather than strumming incessantly, or attempting to emulate usages that are more suited to bowed instruments, we hear craftful arpeggiations supporting the passage of melodies that glide over string activity. The last is the proper use of a clear or acoustic guitar-like instruments, whose sonority lends itself to constant vibrations that form a pool over which appears a face: that of the spirit of the melody. That is the germ that infects the mind, and it is a daemon of possession as well, one that invades and lives in the listener.
The underhanded disalignment induced by the music makes portals of such narrow openings into secretive, wide spaces. The effects can be dizzying, even sickening, submerging us in a vaporous twilight that is neither here or there. As the short pieces pass almost unnoticed, a slow but clear altering of one’s biology seems to take place by virtue of the effective completeness of the “circular motion” that they do possess despite their limited length. Each one moves the eye’s mind, the humors in the chest, and the emotions in differing directions, miniscule in individual magnitude, yet hardly negligible as fifty-six spirits create a vortex at the center of which is the bewildered listener.
7 CommentsTags: 2018, deathwave nexion, Hex Haruspex, Nameless Therein
Osi and the Jupiter play a mostly acoustic ambient with synthetic overtones that borrows heavily from ancestral Nordic cultural remnants for its conceptual, and musical, orientation. In Uthuling Hyl, this takes the form of what we could call a European Pagan Drone music, with all that each of these words could imply by themselves and together. As European, it seeks that connection in instrumentation and tone to pre-traditionalist roots. As a Pagan affair, it is based on a numinous connection to surroundings, contemplative and wordless reflection, and an unfolding wyrd presencing a quality that has come to be known as ‘honor’. As all ambient, the music depends entirely upon its ability to very explicitly maintain a continuous flow of sounds that are not allowed the minimal digression. Thereby is a more esoteric teaching concealed in the construction and balance of the music itself, which is as all art should be. For in trying to bring to bear a connection human beings can have to nature when they place themselves within it with respect and devotion, the music also reflects how delicate this affair is, and how quickly it can all be burnt down by our hubris. In truth, it would take a mundane simpletone —or an utter imbecile— to relegate the experience presented in Uthuling Hyl to a debased utilitarian function such as serving as soundtrack to some ill-advised television show.
The hidden drone component here dictates that the variation of the elements must be done ever so slightly, taking care that texture and tone are gauged with due attention to craft. Texture is sustained while introducing and remaining particulars, relying on relatively abrupt changes in pacing or timbre only in very specifc cases and with a very specifc aim in mind. In general, and above all, the delicate fullness in unity that marks this work serves as a mantle for a whole cosmos in which organisms live a precarious existence but whose essence eternally flows. The patterns of said fabric are sewn by the threads of individual musical voices, surviving as they do mindlessly, but doing so only because their actions fit the pacing and balance of the whole. The endings of those existences are timely and waste not energy nor leave space unmarked. Sounds of worship and numinous contemplation permeate this summoned spiritual world. The cello parts by Kakophonix do not overimpose nor indulge, but enhance ekstasis, bringing an energetic waves that travel the landscape across darkened wood, mountain and sky. In the midst of this interpretation, the mournful, pleading vocalizations stand out as the human presence submerged, wailing, unnoticed in a sinisterly-numinous ocean of flowing forces in colossal dimensions perhaps quantified by some physicist, but ultimately undreamable by our daytime minds.
While all manifestation is One, we can highlight aspects or levels of it as they come to the fore of our impressions. In the case of Uthuling Hyl, this would be more unconscious vaporous tension, the watery flow of emotions that lie below reason and will. The humid web that holds things together here is ever so vulnerable, our transgressions the probable cause of dissolutions that are no crimes but mere effects to causes. The listener, the conscious human, intrudes upon this space, and a decision must be taken to coalesce or see it all dry up, and waste into cold —or perhaps burn up into merciless hatred and ambition. Such is the picture that Osi and the Jupiter reveal in pattern and spirit. As numinous worship, the present work calls for our knowing our place, and seeking our destiny; for our seeking a voice and power, for our evolutive ascendance, in a picture of our cosmos that finds beauty in bleakness.
4 CommentsTags: 2017, Kakophonix, Osi and the Jupiter, Uthuling Hyl
Very few works that presume to connect human beings with energies or entities come across as applicable. More often than not, a lack of honesty would appear to be disguised behind impractical demands that defeat the purpose of a magical working as a shortcut. Despite what detractors have had to say on the matter, Martinent Press has excelled in its publishing of books that the reader can take as they come. A reader can survey a relatively cheap copy of any of the titles and judge the contents therein by what they propose, the author’s revealed character in words and style, and whatever insights they are revealing. Interestingly, Martinet Press leaves it to the public to do their own sifting, allowing no-nonsense heavy-weights like Tempel ov Blood Liber 333 lie on a bookshelf beside the more compilatory and derivative works like A.A. Morain Scithain. In the case of the present booklet, keywords that come to mind upon ‘meeting’ the writer(s)’ character on paper are sincere and honest, energetic and powerful, juvenile and wasteful, obsessive and unstable. But this is only a sympathetic, literary and psychological appreciation, of course, and nothing else.
We find that sincerity and directness is, in fact, at the forefront of the authors’ concerns here, the main concern being the quick leading of the interested individual to the right state of mind: towards at least an aural and psychic clarity regarding alien expectations. As is common within the grimoire tradition, The Deplorable World juxtaposes different literary genres without any transitioning device. The only criteria to the inclusion of each of these parts is what they may bring the reader in terms of an apprehension of the topic at hand. The progression from one section to the next shows a plan designed to implicitly (secretly) address diverse mental requirements in the minds of those seeking after content. However, those looking for fetish antiquary items or page after page of turgid and inconsequential “lore,” with no relevance or substance other than the mirage of words, will have to invest at least several hundred dollars more.
And so, the work opens up with a rather tepid work of light fiction the only value of which is providing a verbal illustration of the situations and atmosphere . Fortunately, the fiction is the first and the weakest section of this publication. The authors proceed from there to references of the Abyss in ancient lore, in a compact section with more substance and referential value than entire books by other, more prominent “occult authors.” Towards the middle, we are presented with plain and simple descriptions of the relevant cosmos and entities, doing away with poetics or any of the masturbatory word diarrhea that is the staple of prominent “occult publications.” Finally come the procedures themselves, starting from simple meditation techniques, advancing towards libations and communion, on to astral exploration and full-out, blood-sacrifice portal opening.
“Magically relevant or GTFO!”
Symbols and procedures lean towards stupor or frenzy, without necessarily naming them so. To those who would get discouraged by the rather unnecessary —even detrimental— opening work of fiction, the rest of the booklet provides concrete working after concrete working, the requirements of which are mainly the capacity for mental focus and a willingness to bend a conventional grasp of sanity in thought and action. The mental investment demanded demands energy, energy that is directed and consumed. Some may leer at the prospect, but they are also those who would not see beyond the intermittent purposelessness that plagues the path of any discipline which develops practical abilities before intellectual understanding or “knowledge.” In this way, we may see in The Deplorable World a potent handbook to develop a raw, focused connection to a cosmic darkness that is ultimately, despite our poetic allusions, beyond explainations.
There is here an unquestionable obsession with violence, that is at the same time juvenile and uninterested. In this, it at once complements and contrasts the involved insights that Georges Bataille derives from what he terms ‘sensuality’. And while this unthinking and ultimately self-defeating drive towards destruction, abandonment and forgetfulness constitutes the praxis, it could be argued that it will remain short of what an evolving human being can become psychologically, physiologically and psychically. For where it used to be a facilitator, there is a point where shock becomes a crutch. If instead of utilizing the capacity for self-shock and channeling towards increasingly potent and predictable results, the practitioner falls into a mindless and never-ending one-upmanship game of inner destruction beyond utility and for their own sake, these methods may instead become a glaring obstacle for the individual’s growth if not understood and assimilated. That such fixation with what the practitioner assumes to be the ultimate “preternatural” reality, and that such obsession with acts of cruelty and violence, can be experienced but transcended into a dynamic exploration and development of the totality of being, is perhaps a first key towards true attainment, or what some call adepthood.
1 CommentTags: constantine charagma, erica frevel, martinet press, the deplorable world
Released in 1999, Unholy Extreme Black is the second of two demos released by the transitory Finnish black metal project Helwetti. Here, Helwetti provides richness through depth in the reach of its rather brief material by making constrained technique malleable to the natural requirements of a flow aimed at bringing in new ideas in a coherent yet always evolving stream. The secret of the elite, almost non-existent underground to producing rare minimalist music of such sublety is a rather bestial and ritualistique effort fueled by dark spiritual ideas founded on enacted reclusiveness. Within this darkness embraced, the true artist manages to bring a powerful invocation of infernal —lower-world, unconscious to the uninitiated— forces in a way that most of the later, allegedly more mature, projects have never reached by a long. The racing melodies of Helwetti’s music in traditional black metal dissonances arranged through percussive changes, opportune breaks and vocal overlays raise its minimalist expression to the best that could possibly be achieved while remaining so simple. The vocals on this recording are an incredible delight to listen to as they express a nuanced wealth of emotions, within this limited framework as the rest of the instruments, greatly adding to the overall atmosphere. The necro sound resulting from the tampering with the original sound gives it a veiled that is certainly not a detriment to the sound of the instruments. Thereby, the clarity of the instruments is not only maintained throughout, but it actually attenuates distractions typical to the metal genre, allowing the merit of the musical arrangements to come to the foreground.
In the matter of technique, guitars do not go beyond softly strummed power chords, not quite fast downstrokes and “tremolo picking” on one string. The bass serves as a proper low frequency holder that does not get in the way but noticeably reinforces the texture of the music. Drums vary between laid back, standard rock patterns in duple time, sometimes with triplet feels, that go on smooth crescendos of double-bass runs; these patterns are then alternated with “d-beats” at different speeds, depending on the location within the pieces. These are all very standard and quite basic techniques, but what raises this demo in musical, rather than technical quality, is arrangement of the parts. Logic is not enough, but a sense of naturality must be expressed that can only be correctly represented by the use of intuition. Black metal in general prides itself in placing intuition before mere logic or the debasing —often clownish and overbearing— technique flaunting of death metal. However, intuition depends entirely on an inwardly developed or innately inherited talent of the individual that is not produced by the application of logic. Also, under close inspection, music resulting from the application of logic (structure-oriented death metal, for instance) is quite different from music prominently steeped in the application of intuition (like the best of black metal). Which means that a lot is outside the normally conscious, calculable control of the individual composing. It is just in this trap that the elitism of black metal lies.
Within the seemingly narrow constraints of raw black metal, we can appreciate how Helwetti creates a rich variety of fluxions which overflow one into the next. Without leaving any question regarding the soundness of their transformations, adjacent patterns are related by transitions that flow smoothly as water downstream. More interestingly, the four different pieces in this demo act as movements within one work. Arguably, many underground demos were compounded in this way. And without there necessarily being a conscious intent in relating it to the classical tradition, the effect is somewhat similar when a release of the stature of Unholy Extreme Black manages to present variety of texture and theme within a coherent and consistent style, bringing interrelated pieces together further under an hidden phantasm grasped by the artist’s senses. It is in communion with “Satan,” “satans,” or “dead things,” and in their consistent, focused sensations thereof, that the black metal musician brings a stream of riffs directed at channeling patterns which vibrate with what is perceived in altered states. The extent to which such a communion is attained, and perhaps the authenticity or the quality of the experience, is what makes the results vary —not to mention actual musical talent. This is precisely the “ritual” to which many a wordless black metal acolytes (For who is truly an adept in this inherently left-handed path?) refer when attempting to describe what this music is as opposed to other kinds of “music” that are aimed at entertainment or technical exercise or narcissistic indulgence.
Tags: 1999, Black Metal, Finland, helwetti, raw, unholy extreme black
The present book explores different mystical and metaphysical ideas related to astrology and magic that fall under a philosophical framework that assigns the living cosmos a hierarchical order of influences that make the mechanics of the cosmos possible. The works studied here are chosen for their inherent worth, but here also for their influence over the developments in Western Occult Philosophy of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. They are termed ‘Arabic’ by virtue of the language the authors wrote the works in, although some of these authors were not themselves Arabs at all. Furthermore, Liana Saif strikes a very insightful balance in that she strives to truly understand this tradition of occult thought from the inside out, as a coherent system of thought from its own vantage point and not in relation to later philosophies.
It must be highlighted that the Arabic treatises explored in this book are of a ‘rational’ character, even if treating of magic and astrology. As Alfred Ayer —who would nonetheless be against notions of magic, said regarding systems of thought— explained in Language, Truth and Logic about philosophy and metaphysis: the only requirement for them to be valid is coherence. From then on, the connection that a system of thought has to ‘reality’ has to do with how its accuracy is gauged, and so how it is applied to achieve any kind of results. In the case of these Arabic influences, “knowledge of resemblances, analogies and sympathies,” played the role of mechanistic causality in these system, even though the system was treated as a living organism in which forces —dynamis, according to Georg Luck— are spirits with volition in a graded hierarchy of beings of descending intellectual power and self-awareness.
Astrology is said to be first of all dependent on a knowledge of astromony. But whereas astronomy attempts only a mathematical calculation of the movements of the heavens, astrology seeks to find causal relations between said movements and the states of beings on our ‘sublunar’ plane (basically, the planet Earth). To this end, many a creative rule of resemblance, sympathy and anipathy is applied, but with the ultimate end of finding a sense, not of feeding superstition. If the conjured explanation is unable to provide a satisfying unifying pattern of ideas with the actual manifest movements, then it is invalid. Furthermore, and most obviously, if within the parameters of the worldview no actual predictions or results are achieved from any presumed astrological knowledge or magical working, these are not supposed to be valid either. It is in this sense that astrology and magic are treated rationally, from its own chosen metaphysical premises.
Liana Saif tells us that explanations based on “causality,” even those that are now deemed “scientific,” do not in any way invalidate interpretations of a spiritual or semiological kind. In this regard, Carl Jung has stressed that human reality lies within phantasia, and neither in the purely physical nor the mental. What this means is that we percieve and act in a world that comes together between the two, and which phantasia eventually follows its own rules and patterns independent yet fed by the upper and lower worlds of the physical and the mental, correspondingly. And so, if a consistency of signs and meanings is achieved from an observation of nature in relation to the human mind and its ability to perceive details, then the efficacy of magic has thereby been attested.
The book itself is pleasant to read in many respects, not least of which is the fluid prose which, while academic in tone, is not bogged down by a lack of style or attention to clarity. What makes the present work powerful and congruent in that respect is that the author uses all modern advantages of systems and knowledge in the service of better understanding and explaining the worldviews and metaphysical propositions of these medieval Arabic thinkers on occult philosophy. It is exciting and fulfulling to read Liana Saif move seemlessly into the mentality of medieval occult thought with full attention and in an apparent “inner comprehension,” even as if she held a stake in this alternate “world,” only to then slide out and provide respectful commentary in the light of modern academic research.
17 Comments“…the natural way of doing this is to start from the things which are more knowable and clear to us and proceed towards those which are clear and more knowable by nature.”
—Aristotle, Physics
Tags: 2015, liana saif, Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic, the arabic influences of early modern occult philosophy
The early phenomenon of Old Wainds played an extremely condensed and straightforward style of black metal that represented the ultimate distillation of what the genre had to offer as a sequence of meaningful flows based on guitar riffs that form aggressively articulated phrases the pressure of which is carefully regulated. The project was a great exception to the reliable rule that says, from experience, that black metal (or metal music in general) from Slavic countries has nothing to offer musically. More often than not, what is called “slavic black metal” is anything but, and in the best of cases falls into what has been misleadingly and ironically called “flowing black metal” to describe a pointless, melodic meandering rock music that lacks significant changes in pacing and texture, and so never is never able to produce the necessary dynamics of tension and release. Alas, Old Wainds plays the exalted and unassuming post-1995 black metal form first seen in the condensed masterpiece of Uranium 235, crushing the heads of the genre as a whole, dividing the line between mundane scenester fanboys and solitary black mystics.
Навь (Nav’) was Old Wainds’ twin project, in which at least one of the band members differed. Musically, what distinguished the two was a the attempted emphasis of Nav’ on more fluid tendencies and softer contours, even if ever so slightly in comparison to Old Wainds. Nav’s distinct aim is arrived at in their first full-length, Чертоги смерти (2004), which basically was a pleasant but weak exposition of the melodic component already present in the best of Old Wainds’ music. While Old Wainds from the beginning has a very narrow style, in the sense of being impressively mature and well-formed, rather than incapacitatingly rigid, Nav’ expresses the riffing and melodic avenues that are left over from the former, but which still fall within this aggressive, dark music.
In time, both projects fell out of grace by their own hand, in a rather telling way that perhaps reveals who the artistic luminary was in both groups. While Kull only participates in the Nav’ demo that is reproduced in this split, along with the second Old Wainds demo, he participates in Old Wainds in every release until Oбжигающий холодный —Scalding Coldness— (2005), a comparatively weakened but still recognizable expression of the project founded on proper black metal riff-flurry. After Kull leaves Old Wainds, the music changes drastically in to a completely uninspired imitation of itself, a sign that the departing element in the team was the author of the significant phrases at the center of the music. This is also true of Nav’, whose best work is found in their 1998 demo Гимн холодному безмолвию, reproduced in this split, and which sees the only apparition of Kull in the project.
Furthermore, after their first full length, Where the Snows are Never Gone (1997) —and with the exception of this split which uses material from the second demo from 1999— Old Wainds’ songwriting was suffering from debilitating notions ever since their second full-length album. We sense a lost grasp or connection to the powerful pulse that created a maelstrom around an inward-looking conversation between the riffs, which can only be described as a vortex of encircling energy. The energy in a void whence arises this power is said inner dialogue of the music, that can only be achieved by two necessary elements: the first is that each section must have a clear and significant fluxion [1] expressed; and the second, consequent of the first, is that these fluxions must achieve a certain dynamic flow in between each other. The interaction between the individual fluxions is most excellently demonstrated in Old Wainds’ debut, and consists in the sense achieved by the parts arranged in sequence, first of all, but also in how they match simultaneously. They who grasp the meaning of this lexic contradiction, but that is not a contradiction in the phenomenon described, may have a first key to unlocking the more effective value of this black metal to the more superfluous acts considered de rigueur.
Notes
[1] https://www.deathmetal.org/article/black-fluxions/
5 CommentsTags: 2003, Black Metal, nav', old wainds, Russia, We Are the North... Mean Cold War...
