One Master - ‘Reclusive Blasphemy’ (Album Review)

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 21/07/2015

Label: Eternal Death

There is a lot of nuance and thought put into the peaks and valleys of these songs, which is unique given their otherwise orthodox style. I still believe that there is a lot from black metal’s early years that can be repurposed and implemented in new ways, and ‘Reclusive Blasphemy’ gives that belief further credibility. This is worth going out of your way to check out.

‘Reclusive Blasphemy’ CD//LP//DD track listing:

1. At the Hour of Saturn

2. A Cursed and Dismal Mind

3. Intolerance

4. Infernal Silence

5. Reclusive Blasphemy

One Master is:

Valder | Guitars, Vocals

Doctor Messiah | Guitars

Black Wolf | Bass

Blood Eagle | Drums

The Review:

As much as black metal in the United States has a reputation in 2015 for having strong ties to post-metal or shoegaze, its formative years was every bit as musically barbaric and grim as its European counterparts. Many of the reviews published closer to this album’s release mention Judas Iscariot as a clear influence, but I think that has more to do with the overall feel of the album rather than a direct compositional link.

In a sense, One Master is a throwback to those primal years for American black metal, back before Weakling’s ‘Dead as Dreams’ became such a big part of what would influence future bands from the States. On ‘Reclusive Blasphemy’ the approach is a lot more harsh and unrelenting like certain parts of Krieg’s work in the early 2000s. Part of what gives the album such an abrasive feel is a largely stripped-down and dead production. The guitars are thicker in tone compared to the more traditional raw black metal recording techniques, and the drums have a sort of muffled/flat quality to them that in this case is a benefit rather than a hindrance. The snare drum is front and center, driving everything forward with a relentless pace for much of the album.

Strangely, the weakest song on the album is the opener, “At the Hour of Saturn”. The song is centered around higher pitched lead guitar parts, more in line with what you might hear from early Liturgy or Krallice, which really betrays the direction of the album as a whole. Once you’re beyond that song, the rest of the album really takes shape and there’s a lot more to sink your teeth into. “A Cursed and Dismal Mind” takes its time and builds to a cathartic release using massive downbeats and twisting guitar riffs at a much more reserved tempo. When the song finally erupts with blasting fury, it sets the rest of the album up for a recurring, but satisfying cycle of frenzy and release.

While One Master may have the same broader musical intent of many of the old American black metal pioneers, it never comes across as a rehash of old ideas. There is a lot of nuance and thought put into the peaks and valleys of these songs, which is unique given their otherwise orthodox style. I still believe that there is a lot from black metal’s early years that can be repurposed and implemented in new ways, and ‘Reclusive Blasphemy’ gives that belief further credibility. This is worth going out of your way to check out.

You can pick up a digital copy here and a CD/LP copy here. 

Band info: Facebook

Locrian - 'Infinite Dissolution' (Album Review)

By: James Harris

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released:  24/07/2015

Label: Relapse Records

‘Standout track ‘An Index of Air’ leans into emptiness with a rattling drone, an almost imperceptibly off-time drum pulsing the intro before expanding out into tidal-waves of anguished convulsions blended with blissed out droning black that Deafheaven would burn gasoline-soaked churches to attain.’

‘Infinite Dissolution’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Act of Extinction

2). Dark Shales

3). KXL I

4). The Future of Death

5). An Index of Air

6). KXL II

7). The Great Dying

8). Heavy Water

9). KXL III

Locrian is:

André Foisy | Guitars, Electronics, Piano
Terence Hannum | Vocals, Moog Little Phatty, Moog Minitaur, Moog Source, MicroKorg, Arp Avatar, EDP Wasp, Mellotron M400, Samples
Steven Hess | Drums, Percussion, and Electronics

The Review:

I'll get this out of the way first; this will be my album of the year. I'm calling it in August. There are louder bands, heavier bands, faster and slower, more blackened bands, but this may as well be a recording of a howling void on peyote for all the quiet moments resemble anything like peace or tranquillity. There is very little human to be found. Even the "musical" moments are haunting and alien, evoking sonic waves of blackness and fire reminiscent of the oil that gives the album its structure. At the risk of utilizing a little Black Metal Theory (I can hear the Liturgy-fueled groans already), I admit this review may be a bit more esoteric than my others! A thick viscous plague of rotted history condensed into an enveloping flow of unrelenting black fucking metal cleverly disguised as something very much post-, complete with moments of otherworldly beauty - this time scorched into soot.

A group known as much for drone and soundscape as their metal, Chicago's Locrian return from the grave again with yet another monumental work, ‘Infinite Dissolution’. A hallmark of their sound, that it's somewhat difficult to easily separate the tracks of a record, is as present as ever. The songs are clearly defined and have beginnings and endings, but they flow into each other, overlap, repeat themes, and maintain a cohesive wall of sound and perfect production continuity throughout. This is the album Lantlos would have made if they were secretly Darkspace. 

Beginning with a fuzzy, hollow thundering that builds in speed before the godless vocals of Terence Hannum synchronize the twitching lurching stomp, deafening blasts beat a "so fast it seems slow"  pattern under the warping contortions of Andre Foisy's guitar on opener ‘Arc of Extinction’. The second track's title, ‘Dark Shales’ turns the oily hinting of the record into an overt statement on fossil-fueled meltdown - even this near ambient interlude reeks of putrefaction, of someone surfacing from the muck only to be broken by witnessing the world on fire. 

"Nemesis in our Soil 

Our Air 

Our Water"

(‘Dark Shales’)

A triptych of songs titled ‘KXL 1-3’ confirms this blackened blazing source as oil, referring to the infamous and controversial midwestern US pipeline from Canadian tar sands to gulf ports. In his epic ‘Cyclonopedia’ (to which this album could serve as exceptionally appropriate soundtrack) Reza Negarestani writes "[oil] is the lubricant current or tellurian flux upon which everything is mobilized in the direction of submission to a desert where no idol can be erected and all elevations must be burned down" - an infinite dissolution in(to) blackness that Islam would consider sinking into the heart of God.

The lyrics as always are extremely minimalistic and barely audible, shrieking that these "crude formations" are "vexed to nightmares." The atmosphere is viciously thick and claustrophobic while simultaneously somehow being vast and open, playing oil's liquid-vapor-desert game to a (black-gold-texas-) T.  Black liquid metallics melt into ether, this hypertoxic pollution recombining in the atmosphere into new burning hydrocarbon structures, then repeating this back and forth cycle over and over as if to drill home the infinitude of their dissolution. Drums and melody are found in abundance, but they rarely come anywhere near a traditional sound, preferring instead to lurk around the edges, vaporizing and reforming around recurrent themes of oil-soaked drowning and solar heat death blurring the ends of everything.

Standout track ‘An Index of Air’ leans into this emptiness with a rattling drone, an almost imperceptibly off-time drum pulsing the intro before expanding out into tidal-waves of anguished convulsions blended with blissed out droning black that Deafheaven would burn gasoline-soaked churches to attain. The only thing resembling 'clean' singing is found on this track, though they are yet more examples of bleak nihilism, knife-twisting the thought that air could be a refuge from this swamping hellscape into the realization that even the air is in "full collapse." Again a passage from Cyclonopedia becomes eerily relatable: "saturated by this timeless desert of Qiyamah (Islam's permanent apocalypse of the Now) is the cancellation of Western time", seeming to share Locrian's idea that oil as a demon has already been fully released, and now we live in the end times. In their music, the human is forever on the verge of being engulfed in this oily outer/inner space - and that may be all we have left. 

"Behold the Blank Gaze 

Of this chasm 

It Reveals the Great Dying 

Legacy of Dust 

and of Crystal 

It's a Blight"

(‘The Great Dying’)

‘Infinite Dissolution’ is available here.  More stellar art by genius David Altmedj can be view here

Band info: Facebook | Bandcamp

Liturgy - 'The Ark Work' (Album Review)

Album Type: Full-Length

Date Released: 24/03/2015

Label: Thrill Jockey Records

‘The Ark Work’ CD//LP//DD track listing:

1. Fanfare

2. Follow

3. Kel Valhaal

4. Follow II

5. Quetzalcoatl

6. Father Vorizen

7. Haelegen

8. Reign Array

9. Vitriol

10. Total War

Liturgy is:

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix | Guitar, Vocals

Bernard Gann | Guitar

Tyler Dusenbury | Bass

Greg Fox | Drums

Review:

Liturgy has always been a divisive band. It’s very likely that they will always be a divisive band. It doesn’t matter whether you’re speaking in purely musical terms, or if you’re talking about the philosophy behind the music; they elicit a strong reaction either way, and that’s probably by design. From the first time I heard ‘Renihilation’; Liturgy just clicked for me. I’ve been listening to black metal for nearly twenty years now, and while I easily identified it as black metal, I’d rarely heard it played with such intensity, or with such a frenetic energy to it. It wasn’t just about blast beats or ridiculously speedy tremolo picking; it was about the entire presentation. It was wild and exuberant at a time when so much of black metal had been more about depression and sorrow (which are still worthwhile things for the genre to explore, by the way).

‘Aesthethica’ harnessed that energy and turned it into songs that dug their hooks into you. The rhythms were stronger and more varied and the band had learned to build up to big moments, which resulted in an even better album than the first. All of this is to say that I have been on board with Liturgy’s musical vision from the moment I heard them. Sadly, I’m not on board anymore and you can believe me when I say that I don’t take any joy in reviewing this album as harshly as I’m going to.

‘The Ark Work’ is a fucking mess. It’s an album characterized by a series of bad decisions from which the instrumental compositions are never able to recover. This isn’t about playing with new genre elements or trying new things in general. It’s about bad execution and not realizing what the reasonable limitations of one’s capabilities as a musician/songwriter are. The biggest issue among several larger problems is Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s vocals. His vocal delivery brings to mind a child who doesn’t want to go to school because they don’t feel good, or maybe begging for more time to finish up a video game. It’s in such stark contrast to the bombast and fanfare of the music that it sounds like it was pulled from a different album and when his singing matched this album’s music closely; it was a happy accident. I’ve often wondered while listening to ‘The Ark Work’ what this album might be with a more capable singer. Who would even be up to the task? I can only imagine.

You can point to a number mishaps throughout the album, musically as well. “Kel Valhaal” borders on being a nightmare to get through as a listener. The horns repeat the same general rhythmic idea over and over again with occasional studio trickery that sounds like the musical equivalent of a thirty year old Max Headroom malfunction. This continues for nearly three minutes, along with bagpipes whining and bells struck with mallets in the background. Once we finally get some genuine progress in the song, the vocals come in and Hendrix delves into some variation of a rap performance. I’m not qualified to dissect a vocal performance in this style, but from someone who only occasionally listens to rap/hip hop, it sounded more accomplished than a complete joke like YouTuber Krispy Kreme, at least. Still, it’s not anywhere near enough for the song to regain its footing after the inadvisable compositional and instrumental choices in the song’s first half.

I will also point out that any review claiming that ‘The Ark Work’ is completely without merit should be read suspiciously too. “Follow” and “Follow II” would make an excellent single instrumental song, taking the best parts of each and condensing it down. The bells work well as an introductory element in “Follow” and the strings are beautiful in the second half of “Follow II”. There’s a great song to be had between the two with judicious editing. “Quetzalcoatl” has some great ideas on the musical side of things, especially in the big climactic moment at about the minute and a half mark. Unfortunately, the vocals are a big hinderance to the rest of the song. Unfortunately, I believe that is in some ways the story of ‘The Ark Work’. Anytime the album shows real promise from a musical standpoint, Hendrix’s vocals choices not only don’t enhance the songs, they get in the way and cause real damage more often than not. Even if the vocals were completely removed, ‘The Ark Work’ would be deeply flawed, but at least you’d be able to appreciate the brilliant moments when they came along. Instead what we have is an album that sounds like it came from a band so excited about its concept and so wrapped up in making it happen that they couldn’t tell what was working and what wasn’t.

Words by: Daniel Jackson

You can pick up a digital copy here and a CD/LP copy here.

For more information:

Facebook | Twitter