By: Mark Ambrose
Album Type: EP
Date Released: 22/06/2018
Label: Season of Mist
With their frenetic guitar work, inspired bits
of avant garde songwriting, and bleak lyrics, Craft are
dead set on reminding us that the vast majority of existence is a lifeless,
black wasteland.
“White
Noise and Black Metal”
CD//CS//DD//LP track listing:
1. The Cosmic Sphere Falls
2. Again
3. Undone
4. Tragedy of Pointless Games
5. Darkness Falls
6. Crimson
7. YHVH’s Shadow
8. White Noise
The Review:
Summertime black metal is a weird proposition
for me. It’s warm, it’s sunny, everyone
is hitting the beach, and, here in the northeastern US, it’s been repugnantly humid. It feels much more like deathy, sludgy,
occasionally grind weather to me. That
deep, swampy rot that makes you want to pass out in the shade somewhere, until
the temperature starts to drop at night and the prospect of frost in the
morning is suddenly in the air again.
The real beginning of black metal season, in other words. But occasionally you get something that
blasts a frozen gust through the humid misery, showing a glimpse of that
endless, cold waste at the heart of black metal. From what I’ve heard, Immortal’s
newest record manages to return the listeners to Blashyrkh, even in the hundred
degree days of July. Less heralded but
no less impressive is the latest from Sweden’s Craft,
who have been quietly amassing a small but incredible discography in the last
twenty years.
It’s been seven years since Craft laid out a full length, and metal empires have risen
and fallen. It’s appropriate that with
opener “The Cosmic Sphere Falls”
coalesces around timeless themes: depression, dread, apocalypse, death and
destruction. “It is eternal. It is
beyond.” The winding, interweaving
guitar lines, slightly askew time signatures, and whispered/screamed lyrics are
hypnotic and terrifying – almost avant garde but simultaneously catchy. The bass is palpable and there’s nearly no
midrange – in my ears a perfect black metal balance. And while the drumming is amazing, it’s not
overly busy. Lyrically, “Again” is far more harrowing than the
icy cold opener. A description of
self-harm descending into self-annihilation, it’s juxtaposed against an
undeniably hooky guitar line and rhythmic stomp. The dual guitar leads of Joakim Karlsson and
John Doe, skewing off into discordant tremolo bursts, are sickening, while the
double-time bursts are oddly affirming against such miserable themes.
“Undone” solidifies the
tension at the core of “White Noise and
Black Metal”: personal turmoil and universal chaos. “Undone”
pulls back from the suicidal precipice of “Again”,
focusing the speaker’s rage toward a cosmos in need of annihilation. The tone is appropriately symphonic –
spiritually, that is. This doesn’t go
full Dimmu Borgir or anything. “Tragedy
of Pointless Games” trades the epic for the individually misanthropic once
again. It’s a somber dirge that sounds
like the best of mid-period Celtic Frost – I even
expected some OUGH!s to burst through the gloom. Instead, singer Nox opines “Awakened and cast into fleshbound pain / Into
a tragedy of pointless games,” with such conviction that I felt utterly
frozen in the midsummer heat.
When it feels nearly unbearably grim, “White Noise and Black Metal” shifts
toward a black ‘n’ roll banger, “Darkness
Falls”. Somewhat evocative of latter
day Satyricon (natch), the first track of side
two is a bit of an amalgam of the themes so far, with some creepy otherworldly
descriptions sneaking into a grim reality.
But before things can get too fantastical, the true horror emerges at
the end: “There's a shadow hanging under
a tree / And a rope is a tool to set one free.”
Instrumental track “Crimson”
is an interesting dirge, highlighting the musical prowess of Karlsson and Doe,
and allowing bassist Phil Cirone’s skillful and restrained work to shine, but
it still feels a lot like any other instrumental interlude.
Thankfully the last two tracks may be the best
on the record. “YHVH’s Shadow” is a blasphemous screed that is, once again, catchy
as hell, especially in a four on the floor headbanger midsection that may be
the most fun on a depressing record I’ve had this year. The sinewy, sinister lead guitar line was
stuck in my head for days after my initial spin of the record, and is some
simple, inspired songwriting. The final
track, “White Noise”, is a final
kissoff to existence itself – individual or universal, where the human
experience is something to be endured, a “distasteful, tiresome thing.” I should note here that Nox’s delivery is
uniformly excellent on the record, but on this track it may be the most
intelligible, adding extra heft to the fury.
There’s a dynamic balance between the chugging rhythm guitar and the
high end lead work, and a final crescendo that’s so intense it feels like the
world itself may be falling to pieces.
Against all expectations, I found myself truly
immersed in a black metal record despite the season, despite the warmth, the
sun, the muggy misery. I was reminded
that the heat death of the universe is inevitable, that the nature of things is
stasis, that death is so, so much longer than the brief bits of living. “White
Noise and Black Metal” is more than a glimpse of winter – it’s a blast of
cosmic cold. With their frenetic guitar
work, inspired bits of avant garde songwriting, and bleak lyrics, Craft are dead set on reminding us that the vast majority
of existence is a lifeless, black wasteland.
That’s far more chilling than even the darkest Norse myths or winter
nights.
“White Noise and Black Metal” is available here
