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Vomitor – Bleeding The Priest

On first listen some would easily assume that this release were a mere product of nostalgia of underground metal of the 1980′s, at least indicated so by the production and indication that are present here. However this is death/speed/black metal firmly rooted in the underground crossover tradition of the 80′s and retains a firmly Australian sound to it. A good description of Vomitor‘s output would be the the epic thrashing of national pioneers Slaughter Lord and the crusty, retrograde execution and production that was witnessed on Spear Of Longinus‘ brilliant ‘Domni Satnasi’ album. Seeing as Vomitor have two members of SOL in their line-up this overlap is of no surprise, and gives ‘Bleeding The Priest’ a similar quality of riffcraft and execution, which is atavistic but is well versed in older styles of metal. The attitude of this release evokes German speed metal, doing the early works of Sodom and Kreator strong justice, and the manner in which catchy guitar sequences are utilised sometimes evokes Razor, had they been influenced by Possessed rather than Motorhead. A thoroughly consistent work, ‘Bleeding The Priest’ stands strongly as a milestone of Australian metal, a like a few other traditionalist acts within this genre serves as proof of ability to make new waves from trodden water, rather than being a ‘re-hash’. Very good. 

In anticipation of the profane rites of spring and summer

As the solar powers emancipate the winter’s icy grip, the pieces of art we hoped to dominate this year’s playlists are gradually fading to old news, not to spoil any upcoming reviews of efforts such as Burzum‘s pastoral “Belus”, Immolation‘s showy “Majesty and Decay” and Winterwolf‘s cheeky “Cycle of the Werewolf”. Insatiable death squads that we are, relentlessly lusting for the lower ethereal planes, our sights gaze upon promised treasures such as the debut album of North Carolina’s Anu, “Opus Funaerum” and the sophomore benedictions of Australia‘s Cauldron Black Ram and New York’s Profanatica; namely, “Slubberdegullion” and “Disgusting Blasphemies Against God”. The Anu CD is currently in press and will be available through Graveless Slumber Records and distributors worldwide, this Demoncy related band having already caused a stirring of unbenevolent underground majesties with its acrid and harsh self-titled EP and Myspace samples promising neo-ambient black metal hymnals dedicated to the darkness and quietude of night, in the profound manner of Sorcier des Glaces and Legion of Doom who know how to make the synthesizer sound archaic. The LP version will be out later on Werewolf Records, whose releases I generally find worthwhile to pay attention to. Cauldron Black Ram has hardly softened their sound over the years in favor of pirate maniacs scattered by the sinking of Running Wild‘s flagship, instead paying homage to Autopsy and Hellhammer with primi-syncopated drumscapes, poisonous grunts and eerily progressive riffing that gets at times, not that surprisingly, close to what compatriots Portal practice on galactic hyperspeeds, CD out now on Weird Truth Productions. Profanatica’s audial sodomy, out in summer through the hallowed Hells Headbanger Records hardly needs much explanation nor much can be provided, as Ledney remains the official high priest of evil USBM since more than two decades of non-compromising, pummelling, harsh and blasphemous black metal.

And while waiting for all these to intrude your mailbox as if it was the holy anus, check out some of the forthcoming gigs in your area and present yourself simultaneously as a brutal but intelligent metalhead, in order to raise the honourable status of this artform in your country. Hail and kill.

Nocturnal Transcendence – Interview with Midnight Odyssey

As much of the northern hemisphere is being overwhelmed by the onslaught of winter, the flames of Hell are rising to consume the south at summer’s peak. Still, the hardened souls of Black Metal warriors remain unfrozen, and Australia‘s Dis Pater from Midnight Odyssey is no exception. A recent arrival on the scene producing beautiful and mature music demanded one of our interrogations, which revealed some of this artist’s thoughts on ambience, patience and experience.

ObscuraHessian: We thought ‘Firmament‘ was among the best albums of 2009, and I was pleased to hear that I, Voidhanger is doing the good deed of re-releasing your old material within the next couple of months! Looking back at your first Midnight Odyssey work, with its exhibition of diverse influences, how would you describe your mindset as an artist back then, compared to putting tracks together for the more streamlined ‘Firmament’?

Dis Pater: Hello, thank you for your compliments. I, Voidhanger is in fact re-releasing “Firmament” which shall be out early March hopefully. The Forest Mourners was for me somewhat of a transcendence between the music I used to write and record privately and the Firmament release. I had a lot of influences which I wanted to incorporate into the project, and I guess I wanted to keep the door open as much as possible to prevent being labelled any one genre of music.

ObscuraHessian: In addition to hearing the obvious traces of bands like Burzum and Summoning in the demo, the ambiental feeling seems to quote some of my favourite ambient output, from Jääportit to ‘Dark Age of Reason’-era Arcana. What’s your relationship with ambient music and what’s your recipe for ‘Ambient Black Metal’?

Dis Pater: I have long been a fan of Cold Meat Industry bands, particularly early Arcana, Raison D’Etre, Ildfrost, Mortiis, Deutsch Nepal, In Slaughter Natives, etc, etc. Ambient music was the first music I ever tried to record, and it’s something I have worked on as much as black metal, so combining the two seems natural for me. A recipe? Well A lot of modern bands do a fantastic job of mixing ambience and black metal – Paysage D’hiver, Coldworld, Darkspace, Marblebog, Vinterriket, etc, I think it’s just being able to use keyboards with metal in a not so pompous way.

ObscuraHessian: I like to imagine that an entire Black Metal album could be recorded one day without percussion. Midnight Odyssey’s proclivity for ambience demonstrates as well as a ‘Filosofem’, ‘Winterkald‘ or ‘Antichrist‘ how this could actually work. Do you think that there’s enough scope in ‘Black Metal composition’ to eschew drums completely? Maybe an artist should just go and make electronic music like so many warriors have done?!

Dis Pater: It’s funny you say electronic music. I too have delved into the electronic side of things in the past, and find a unique way of writing music there that seems to work well with the way I write for Midnight Odyssey. Bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, all the way up to Trance and Industrial Electronica all have some unique element for repetition and layer building. I try to do the same with Midinght Odyssey, but with guitars and bass. I think it is possible to record an entire album without drums, it’s something I have thought about, and think I could achieve in the future, without going too far down the line of electronic music.

ObscuraHessian: On ‘The Forest Mourners’, there is a subtle but still more continual folkiness to the music. Some of it reminds me of the folk/ambient images that A. Tolonen produces with Nest, but other times are a little more Celtic? as is the case with the opening track – which makes me think of a more contemplative Himinbjorg. Did you use such folk stylings as a conscious expression of ancestry, or is this a direct manifestation of musical influences? Being an Australian, is such a tribal connection even possible, in the manner of the Norwegians from Helvete, for example?

Dis Pater: The folk element is something deliberately incorporated into the music. I have good friends who are in a celtic folk band here in Brisbane, so their influence on my music is sometimes present. Also I enjoy folk metal, and some heavy metal such as Gary Moore’s Wild Frontier album, where there seems to be a lot of celtic folk/rock influences. So yes in Brisbane it is possible to still maintain some connectivity with a European heritage, probably more-so than say America because Australia is a much younger country, most of us have parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who weren’t born here. Also my music is about a time long ago in the past, and thus folk music has its meaning there.

ObscuraHessian: There is as much mention of ‘spirits’ in the titles of songs from ‘The Forest Mourners’ as there is of nature, but the ideas of the subsequent album seem to suggest that this reflects more than just an animism of some sort. You talk about ‘Departing Flesh and Bone’ and of course, the whole work is underlied by this connection between the active and earthly, and cosmic and eternal. This is an idea which is really interesting to me because it seems to get lost in modern discussions of both natural science and populist, Judeo-Christian religion. Could you explain how you came to terms with this understanding?

Dis Pater: To me, this entire area has been corrupted by Judeo-Christianity and most modern monotheistic or dualistic religions, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc. The album Firmament is based on the moment of death, the moment a soul leaves the human body and what supposedly comes after. This is based on a somewhat personal experience which I have attempted to migrate to a more populous and general theme, set back in a time which I believe has been erased from human record, a time when humans were a little more in touch with their spiritual and carnal natures, when everything wasn’t so easily divided into what’s good and what’s evil. I like the moral ambiguity of everything, that to me is what existence is about, it’s not about the ultimate battle of good and evil that religion tells us to believe in.

ObscuraHessian: Even with your influences on your sleeves, so to speak, the music of Midnight Odyssey is very imaginative and this rapid-fire consistency at this point of your career makes it feel very ‘lived out’! How would you describe the way in which the actual sounds that you produce are a representation of the aforementioned ideas or feelings? I mean, with most popular music, it seems to be fabricated in such a way to prioritise the broadest demographics, but obviously, good Black Metal wouldn’t be composed with such vagueness in mind!

Dis Pater: Yes my music is rather spontaneous actually. I won’t write anything for months, then do an album in three days, then sit back a few weeks and let it mature, perfecting it. When the time comes to write music, I am completely obsessed, engulfed in this strange atmosphere, it’s kind of like walking out before a summer storm, you can almost feel the lightning seeking you out ready to strike, it’s almost panic. It’s usually after hearing a certain song somewhere, an idea will come into my head, and I won’t be able to sleep, I usually don’t eat or drink anything for a day or so. I listen to a lot of music, and I know what I like and I only release music that after a while I can still listen to and not feel embarrassed or ashamed about, to me it has to envoke those same impulses and manic trances that I got whilst recording the music. I know the exact tones, the exact reverb levels, the exact production levels I like and desire, so my music is always a mixture of new creative forces and learned processes, which has taken me nearly 10 years to get to.

ObscuraHessian: The sound of the full-length is naturally better as there’s more space between instruments but you still managed to reflect an enclosed feeling which sounds like the music is passing through a million leaves and branches before it hits the listener. Did the demo receive any remastering before sent to be pressed for its forthcoming distribution?

Dis Pater: The demo, actually both demos which will be re-released, (The Forest Mourners on Kunsthauch Records in Russia, possibly as a split) But neither are going to re-mastered, they are being kept the same, the only difference is with the new version of Firmament, the songs will be made to cut out less at the end (i.e. the music fades a bit before ending abruptly) and the last track From Beyond The 8th Sphere is being renamed simply Beyond the 8th Sphere (We noticed I used the word From a bit too much haha).

ObscuraHessian: Are you still working on music for an album to follow ‘Firmament’?

Dis Pater: Yes there are a couple of things. One is a split with Wedard, which will be two songs from the Firmament sessions, actually one was written in between Forest Mourners and Firmament and has a bit more of an epic folk, and the other was written after and is not really a metal song). The next full length is recorded (except the vocals) and is a continuation of Firmament. Musically I think it is similar, but maybe a little bit more epic and ethereal in feel.

ObscuraHessian: Could you tell us a little about your activities outside of Midnight Odyssey, including any other musical projects?

Dis Pater: Other than Midnight Odyssey, I have a project called Fires Light The Sky. I had recorded two songs but have changed the style a bit of the band and am set to release 4 songs (which are actually old old Midnight Odyssey songs reworked and re-recorded, I think three of them I wrote in 1999, and one in 2001, so it’s a more aggressive and standard black metal but nonetheless I feel I have to release them just to get them out of mind, it’s like holding on to a secret that you want to tell everyone and can’t do anything else until you tell someone. Also I have plans for a funeral doom project at some stage this year.

ObscuraHessian: What was the last awesome book that you read?

Dis Pater: The last good book, well strangely I don’t read much, I think the last good thing I read was a book on Early Greek Philosophy, it was interesting to see just how fragmented records are and the work that goes into fitting the pieces of history together. It was interesting too to see these people from thousands of years ago try to describe something, and doing it relatively correctly, but just not having the correct terminology and understanding to fully comprehend it.

ObscuraHessian: What was the last piece of music you heard that resonated most with your own thoughts and feelings?

Dis Pater: The last music would definitely be the Polish band Evilfeast, I got some cds on the way and I can’t wait to hear the whole albums, a couple of songs I’ve heard of them blew me away – epic, atmospheric and very depressing dark music.

Hails to Dis Pater for answering my questions and all the best for the future of Midnight Odyssey!

Heavens Below & Heavens Above

As we now have ample space to look back over the year that has transpired, let us visit only two Black Metal albums released earlier in 2009 and in doing so, we might illuminate the difference in the spirit of these artists, though their influences and outward gaze follow a similar trajectory.

Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

With this album, Blut Aus Nord’s habit of jumping from one established school of Black Metal thought to another has been replaced by a slightly more focused exploration of the abstract ideas that Vindsval‘s tried to find an appropriate voice for since after the release of the crowd-pleasing ‘The Work Which Transforms God’. The continutations from that album and the following ‘Odinist’ lie in the same dissonant and synthesized riffs, but the template here is more Burzumic in the sense that songs specifically seem to mould themselves well to the approach of ‘My Journey to the Stars‘ from Count Grishnackh’s self-titled work. In addition, as there is a distinctly Eastern flavour to the metaphysics which Blut Aus Nord has arranged very eruditely over the course of the album, corresponding musical themes are ever-present.

As unusual as it is, in Black Metal music, to come across traces of an European longing for the cosmically affirmed existence mixed with a very Buddhistic negation of the unreal, these aren’t incompatible ideas and have been demonstrated in European art since Sanskrit and Pali literature first arrived in Germany and in the hands of Richard Wagner. However, there seems to be an unavoidable unsubtlelty that plights bands who are this radically overt in their application of Indian and Oriental themes, which even Blut Aus Nord’s mastery of ethereal sound effects hasn’t been able to disguise. Where this becomes present is in sync with the downfall of the music in general. The composition is a highlight reel of riffs that have some relevance to each other, but too often feel contrived and edited in the attempt to bring about some change in the dynamics of the music. This leaves the songs often rushing towards their conclusions in quite a generic manner, or going nowhere in the same manner of fellow French bands S.V.E.S.T. and Deathspell Omega. Riffs are then overlaid with leads or interspersed with patterns that are Eastern sounding, which does break the dip in interest, but only vaguely hints at where the artist wants to go and doesn’t actually take it there. The leads sound especially tacked on, possessing none of the integralism of a Sorcier Des Glaces on his ‘Snowland‘ masterpiece.

In the end, the psychedelic and cosmic sounds of ‘Memoria Vetusta II’ are well-intentioned but it comes across more like a New Age soundtrack than possessing the profundity of a Steve Roach album, for example. It is, though, Blut Aus Nord’s best work to date and does actually give hope of an interesting follow-up if the band gets totally lost in these conversations with the universe and not totally bored with it, needing to change ‘direction’ again.

Midnight Odyssey – Firmament

It’s almost impossible for some Black Metal bands, breathing only the contaminated air of darkness, to escape the grasp of Burzum’s music. Midnight Odyssey’s ‘Firmament’ is another highly Burzum-influenced album, but this one from down under refers to the Count’s most accessible work so far, ‘Filosofem’ with some hints of the earlier albums. This amounts to revisiting those thick but purposeful, contra-shoegazing, melodic guitars, distorted screams and the rolling, equitarean kick-drumming.

Countless bands have tried and failed to capture the Romantic visions that first gave rise to this style, because it’s technically quite easy to execute, but such simplicity doesn’t demand technical ability (mimicry) nor even a thorough understanding of such visions (erudition) but possessing the sight itself, so that the music can live and emanate as simply as we breathe. ‘Firmament’ fills this role excellently as a series of interactive sonic portraits that are laden with a sense of ferality amidst the cosmos. Epic melodies ring sharply like the emotions of a soul that finds beauty and the true conditions of life in the unknown, wild and organic frontier, far away from the constructions of our artificially-induced desires. These emotions become enmeshed in the depths of the night and senses heighten to an active sense of awareness, re-uniting struggle and survival with a cosmic context, and in a manner highly reminiscent of ‘Jesus’ Tod‘ with an increasing sense of immersion created by a focus on guitar ambience rather than phrasal (though continual), percussive or rhythmic elements. Infact, even though the drums are very well applied to create an engaging sense of pace, it would be interesting to hear the entire album sans percussion. Keyboards are applied both in the manner of Burzum’s reflective ambient pieces, and as a subtle, ethereal layer over the woods-shrouded Black Metal music, giving the album its reflective and almost panentheistic (like the American Transcendentalists) dimension.

A great debut album and although its form is very familiar and pretty easy to grasp, this is one which will have the biggest impact on those that have two feet grounded in the mud and grass, covered in bruises and wounds from bushes and thickets, but still with their eyes on the stars beyond the heighest leaves, breathing deeply in the all-embracing darkness of the night.