Summoning to release new EP, re-issue vinyl versions of older classic albums

by Jon Wild on June 4, 2013

Members of ambient black metal band Summoning have braved the hellscape that is Facebook in order to carry news of further releases.

summoning-old_mornings_dawnEarlier this year saw Summoning release their first album in seven years, Old Mornings Dawn. Our review saw it as “a creative journey into the recesses of the mind and embraces the sentimental alongside the epic, using its ambient structuring to immerse the listener in a world far beyond anything they have experienced.”

Fortunately for us, the band possesses six more tracks from the album session. They will began the process of finalizing their production and expect to release these tracks next year as an EP. Until then, the band will hold its fans over by releasing an “earbook” edition of Old Mornings Dawn, which includes two acoustic bonus tracks; and vinyl reissues of Nightshade Forests, Oath Bound, and Lost Tales.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news; as the band has stated that this is a prelude to a period of dormancy:

“In the end of next year, when everything is said and done, and all works are finished and released, the forges will get cold again,and we will rest at last. Then Summoning will fall asleep again for a longer time, until a new dawn is rising…”

We hope that this interval will not be as long as the gap between Oath Bound and Old Mornings Dawn, but we recognize that art often needs time to germinate and we eagerly await new material, whenever it may arrive.

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Summoning – Old Mornings Dawn

by Brett Stevens on April 29, 2013

summoning-old_mornings_dawnAfter the first wave of Norwegian black metal entirely re-defined the genre into a melodic and intensely artistic form of music, it seemed metal had culminated. Its technique exploded in death metal, and with black metal, it began the process of creating narrative melodic compositions.

Summoning jumped into this heap by evolving from a relatively straightforward downtempo black metal band into a melange of keyboards, lengthy fast-picked slow melodic passages, and soundtrack-style framing of song structures in the context of atmospheric, Tolkien-inspired vaguely medievalist metal. Ever since they nailed that combination on Dol Guldur, Summoning has been a legend in the metal scene.

After the experiment in greater use of vocals and folk-like dynamics that was Stronghold, Summoning returned with Oath Bound, which edged them closer to the territory last explored on Dol Guldur before the music got more atmospheric on the Nightshade Forests EP. Seven years later, anticipation ran high for their latest, named Old Mornings Dawn.

Coming from the same creative wellspring as other Summoning works, Old Mornings Dawn channels three separate influences: the classic downtempo black metal of its origins, the “Renaissance Faire” style of folk/world music that it became, and an influence that can only be described as dark 1980s industrial goth pop. This album fits in with Joy Division, Soft Cell, Sisters of Mercy and other darker forms of synthpop and EBM, much in the same way that Nightshade Forests picked up similar influences. At the same time, hints of the Stronghold style where vocals lead composition help define these songs.

What is most pronounced on this album however is that Summoning are using the layered style that worked so well on not only Nightshade Forests but the Lost Tales EP as well, but have removed even more of the metal “forward” style narrative composition. Instead, these are circular compositions with layers, but in the best metal style, moods accrue and eventually force change into an entirely different but complementary riff. The result is a ferment of slightly differentiated influences fit into the only song structures that could incorporate them all. The result is like an exotic tour alongside a riverbank populated by fantastic figures from dreams.

Old Mornings Dawn is a creative journey into the recesses of the mind and embraces the sentimental alongside the epic, using its ambient structuring to immerse the listener in a world far beyond anything they have experienced. The result drifts farther from black metal without betraying black metal, and instead creates a voice unique to Summoning which sensibly does not try to be Dol Guldur II, but to create a niche for itself. Its decreased distance from the listener allows emotion to meld with music and create an atmosphere unique to this band and the spread of time they have chosen with their music.

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Summoning – Old Morning’s Dawn pre-order

by Brett Stevens on April 9, 2013

summoning-old_mornings_dawn-pre-orderTolkien ambient black metal project Summoning have unleashed their latest recording, Old Morning’s Dawn, via Napalm Records. The pre-order links are now active and the final product will be released June 27, 2013.

Napalm Records promises that “Despite the long break, the congenial duo Silenius and Protector did not stray an inch from their patch. Their distinctive melodies are the heart of all the songs on the latest longplayer, and bring the listeners directly into the fantastic world of Middle-Earth.”

Old Morning’s Dawn follows up on 2006’s Oath Bound, which united the epic spirit of power metal with the gentle melodic atmosphere and inner savagery of black metal, making the ideal soundtrack for medieval battle or spiritual occult warfare against the modern world.

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pre-order CD 12 EUR / pre-order DLP 23 EUR

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Summoning “Old Morning’s Dawn” release date set

by Brett Stevens on January 11, 2013

summoning-old_mornings_dawnMiddle earth sweeping epic metal band Summoning are due to release their next full-length soon. Old Morning’s Dawn will follow after a lengthy gap the spectacular and critically-acclaimed Oath Bound released seven years ago.

After black metal fired off its initial salvo by 1995, Summoning rose from a melodic black metal band into their own style, which meshed longer melodies, lush keyboards and backgrounded guitars, Tolkien-derived imagery and softened but rasping vocals. Building on the work of other long-phrase black metal bands like Ancient, early Enslaved and Gorgoroth, but using its own sense of tempo and mood, Summoning quickly became a favorite for many who were searching for a new direction after the underground blazed out with a final peak of intensity in albums like Transilvanian Hunger and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss.

This weighty inheritance would be too much for any band to handle, but Summoning have refined it over the years, first adding more traditional folk elements and then dialing it back to a streamlined metal sound. During that time, they’ve also fought off accusations of political impropriety and overcome personnel changes and the mercurial black metal scene/market. With their audience primed with the release of the recent movie The Hobbit, Summoning are ready for conquest yet again.

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Summoning album in the works

by Ralph Archer on November 20, 2012

The latest offering by Austrian Tolkien-inspired black metal band Summoning was Oath Bound from 2006, an album that “re-explore[d] the medieval and naturalistic nature of black metal” and delivered “a new chapter of full-bore dark exploration that dominates almost anything from the last ten years of this genre.”

What of the new album? The Summoning homepage reports that the guitars will be recorded this November and that Napalm Records “will put a one minute trailer to advertise the new CD on [their] homepage, that hopefully will happen around december.” According to earlier news the album will probably be released during the first quarter of 2013.

In the meantime, our forum members have expressed a few requests concerning the future release, including varying the melodies and song structures within songs, cutting down on the drums and using instruments that are “less fruity”.

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Summoning – Minas Morgul

by Enda Miller on July 5, 2011

Great Death Metal, through its boundless courage, developed an uncanny ability to plunge listeners into a subterranean labyrinth, revealing the philosophical impetus that stimulated the development of the genre itself. Black metal is slightly inverted, wherein the meandering melodic and thematic developments reveal an adventurous spirit and a desire to plunge into and discover the majesty of the infinite. Indeed, although each genre is somewhat complimentary there is a stark philosophical difference that characterizes each, where Death Metal revels amongst the catacombs and forces listeners to re-evaluate life in the face of their impending doom, Black Metal having stared long enough into the abyss and having emerged from the catacombs seeks glory amongst the stars, and in so doing provides listeners with a glimpse into what once was, and must be again.

Minas Morgul is a testament to this very spirit. Individually meandering, soaring and delicate melodic phrases weave around one another, periodically converging and thus creating a breathtakingly lucid and organically familiar polyphonic structure. What the listener will find most striking is the way each melodic motif develops according to its own internal logic while simultaneously complimenting and augmenting the presentation and development of concurrent melodic lines, which themselves develop according to their own internal logic. Here the infinite abounds as listeners bear witness to the expert use of polyphony, with each rung in the ethereal melodic hierarchy subtly altering the emotional experience of the listener through its capacity for slight differentiation.

The individual melodic motifs themselves are more robust and less restrained than the cryptic sense of melody that characterized say early Darkthrone. However therein lay this albums strength, as each melody is highly communicative and capitalizes on its inherently archaic, although timeless content to appeal those psychological archetypes that define the modern Hessian, to wit, regality, a desire for adventure, wanderlust and a sense for the transcendent.

Guitars are a secondary instrument on this album, however they are utilized with such tact and melodic viciousness, if I may say so, as to ensure that the sometimes airy and sentimental melodies remain grounded, bonded to an orthodox sense of attack and ferality that has always made great metal threatening, challenging, confrontational, and insightful.

Indeed, what makes this album truly compelling is that it successfully melds together a romantic longing for those eternal values that once gave life meaning, with a feral and commanding spirit that wishes to take hold of life and explore it’s depths, and its mountainous heights! One is less likely to find an album more suitable to one’s journey of self exploration and self transcendence.

-TheWaters-

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