Album Type: EP
Date Released:
09/06/2017
Label: Prosthetic Records
Schammasch have created something
remarkable with this most recent artistic expression, sophisticated, complex
and yet somehow, eminently accessible. Get
lost. It is worth your time to find a way out.
“The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite” CD//DD//LP
track listing:
1). “Prologue”
2). “The Weighty Burden Of An Eternal Secret”
3). “Along The Road That Leads To Bedlam”
4). “These Tresses Are Sacred”
5). “May His Illusion Last Until Dawn’s Awakening”
6). “Chimerical Hope”
7). “Do Not Open Your Eyes”
2). “The Weighty Burden Of An Eternal Secret”
3). “Along The Road That Leads To Bedlam”
4). “These Tresses Are Sacred”
5). “May His Illusion Last Until Dawn’s Awakening”
6). “Chimerical Hope”
7). “Do Not Open Your Eyes”
The Review:
"May it please heaven
that the reader, emboldened and having for the time being become as fierce as
what he is reading, should, without being led astray, find his rugged and
treacherous way across the desolate swamps of these sombre and poison-filled
pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a tautness of
mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will
dissolve his soul as water does sugar. It is not right that everyone should
savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on
your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous
wastelands." Comte de Lautréamont, “Les Chants de Maldoror”
There
can be only deep silence after the invocation of the triune. It is time to
pause. An initiate, waiting, in the shadows, barely breathes, as the adept
brings one deeply important ritual to a close. You know where you were left,
but are unclear where the way could possibly open again. Ab initio, ab
vacuo, a ritual begins, revitalized, innovative, and redacted: but only in
the paths it wanders, not in the powers it invokes. Thunder, perfect mind.
Schammasch have created something
remarkable with this most recent artistic expression, something that draws
deeply and effectively on both the painterly and writerly roots of its
inspiration. It is sophisticated, complex and yet it, somehow, it is eminently
accessible. It is a sort of roman-de-clef, but it does not seek to intimidate,
browbeat or baffle the listener with fabricated dissonance or obfuscatory
elitism. It invites the listener to enter its mysteries and get profoundly lost
within them. Schammasch
here effectively create auditory and lyrical topographies that bend the common
conventions of compositional and narrative structure in surreal ways. I am
using surreal here in the sense of Magritte and Dali, both of whom illustrated Lautreamont's
“The Lay of Maldoror”; it is a bending
of reality, a reconfiguration of the real through symbolic interpolation. The
six songs following the prologue mirror the Canto division of Lautreamont's
poetic novel, a glimpse into the fin-de-siecle madness that performed this
superlative Dada-like twist on both the”
Divine Comedy” and “Paradise Lost”.
“May His Illusion Last
until Dawn's Awakening” and “Chimerical Hope”
are perhaps the most immediately 'moving' of these tracks, but as with all
things Schammasch,
this album should be taken as a whole: in contemplation, in mindful inebriety.
Get lost. It is worth your time to find a way out.
"I am the silence
that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name"The Thunder, Perfect Mind
I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name"The Thunder, Perfect Mind
FFO: Behemoth, Secrets of the Moon, Deathspell Omega, Triptykon
