black metal / folk

Very often people not familiar with the more fringe variants of metal (be it black or death metal, grindcore or drone metal) always associate music like Eoront’s as nothing more than pure “mashed up sound washed away by the tide” - at least that’s what my wife always says. And indeed for the uninitiated the music of the Siberian black metal band could be nothing but a whirlwind, an amalgam of chaos and noise or just painful pulp. 

Nevertheless, these lines are for those who know something about black metal. Maybe not about Eoront, but that will probably change when listening to their new album “Gods have no Home” which was released digitally at the beginning of November and which will see physical releases in December 2020 (CD/tape) and March 2021 (vinyl). The first association that comes to mind is The Ruins of Beverast, Fén or Saor because the Russian band has a knack for incorporating some folk elements into their sound just like the giants from Scotland or Germany. If you notice a similarity to fellow Russian project Gloosh then you have proven an excellent taste and ear because: Gloosh is another project by Eoront member ‘Foltath Eternum’. 

One should note the beautiful artwork which was done by Vladimir Prokofiev and which shows a winter scenery at night with a human figure huddled close to the fire which is the only source of light in the middle of an old, dead forest with a few anthropomorphic trees behind the freezing human. This figure plays a major role for the record, he personifies a nameless god in rags who wanders around the world. The band says “He spends the night under the open sky, making a fire in the gorges and sheltering from the wind under a low bush.” While traversing the cold world he passes villages, people but also forlorn huts recaptured by nature and its arms. This last metaphor is another parallel to Gloosh but also to Fén with the human seemingly intruding upon nature or where we witness nature being able to drive away the remains of a human occupancy. In the parallel universe created by Eoront, mankind is seen as a source of evil brought into the natural world.

However, coming back to the wanderer, the nameless god. In Flotath’s universe, Gods, unlike in Greek mythology, have no home but are constantly searching for one. They are always looking for a home. Here, we can see the parallel to human life, most of us are perpetually searching for a place that doesn’t exist, a home. This might seem absurd but if we are honest, how deep can our roots be, when we are living in a world where nearly every second marriage ends in divorce with children suffering from split families? Not every house is a home. Interestingly, Foltath only wrote the lyrics to one of the songs, all the other lyrics are texts from Russian poet Max Voloshin. This must be noted: Eoront is able to find lyrics within the oeuvre of a long-dead Russian poet and incorporate them into a story of their own. Voloshin, a Symbolist, is known for being a supporter of humanist ideas who also opposed the idea of communism because he wanted his contemporaries to first of all the others as humans and not primarily as citizens / revolutionaries or friends / enemies. He recreated the semi-mythical world of the Cimmerii which was based on the place Voloshin lived in at the time, Crimea. 

When listening to Eoront, one must also note the musical versatility – this is not just a pap of sounds but a very well-defined black metal record. One will find nice speed changes with a lot of variable tempi – from stormy blastbeats to slow doomy passages. The mood is dark but not hopeless (no search is hopeless) with the highlights of the instrumentation being the flutes by Elena Korenevskaya and the violin passages by Evgenia Antsiferova. These two really turn the folksy parts into the must-remember moments on “Gods have no Home”. 

If you like your black metal charged with a philosophical background and some very earthy tones, blackened in thought and sound – then Eoront is a very good choice for you. 


Thorsten

This edition of our Brieviews is a special one to me as it is about one of my favorite labels – Eisenwald Tonschmiede from Thuringia, Germany. They specialize in everything black metal and have already brought us some awesome releases this year – Ashtar, Fluisteraars, Fellwarden. They have collaborations with two of Europe’s best black metal collectives, the Haeresis Noviomagi label for which they produce the vinyls and the Helvetic Underground Committee (expect a bigger article on that group of aficionados soon) bringing some of Switzerland’s bleakest records to date. If you combine all these releases plus some re-releases of Mosaic, Germany’s finest medieval black metal artist, you see that their demands for a release are not simply pure black metal fury but that the act fits to the roster, it must share something with all the others and that – in my mind is a very naturalistic approach to music, with traditional folk-segments and references to nature as a sacred entity. These elements may vary in depth and level of elaboration and prominence on all of the records but they are certainly noticeable. 
Today I want to focus on some of their very last releases to further showcase the variety of this label. You can find all of their releases in their webstore at http://www.eisenton.de.

black metal

Eisenwald is a label specialized in everything black metal and its niches. With UADA they have a kind of melodious, near-pop variant of it, with Mosaic they serve a kind of folkloristic version of it and with one their latest releases, Svabhavat’s debut they seem to pay respect to the beginnings of the bleakest and darkest version of black metal. “Black Mirror Reflection” is black metal in the pure vein of Darkthrone or Mayhem. Even though they come from the Pacific Northwest (like their labelmates UADA), there is none of the typical elegiac elegance of many of the black metal bands from that region, think of Mizmor or Hell. The duo plays what they call Ritualistic Black Metal and truly this can be the soundtrack to the exorcism of just about anybody. They often start their songs with very short highly interesting sound ideas, but then blast them away with bloodthirsty fervor not too often found on Eisenwald’s roster, maybe Death.Void.Terror being the only similar artist. This here is a ritual but not in the meaning that only the music is important, here we do not witness shamans singing to a blood-red moon, but more two Luciferian monks screaming their lungs out in the depths of a church where they are igniting the candles. Sometimes they are able to very effectively hide their songwriting skills behind a veil of thunder, for example in “Abhicaara” where the song breaks down into an atmospheric middle but when the riffs collide again they do not lead to another hellish fire but rather to a more re-defined, slowed down ending. If the band follows the latter path a bit more – like they show on the title track at the end – then we are on to something great here, because the two definitely know how to raise hell, they only need to show that there ritual doesn’t start with blood and gore but also with igniting the candles and slowly giving it the pauses it needs for the incantations to work its magic. A very promising addition for Eisenwald.

black metal

When talking about Eisenwald we should not forget that UADA released their latest opus magnum “Djinn” at the end of September. A few months years ago, one of Germany’s most important political magazines “Der Spiegel” (similar to TIME or NEWSWEEK in the US) published an article about UADA (Latin for ‘the haunted’) and it surprised me to see an article about one of my favorite genres in there. Their claim was that black metal had turned into some kind of hipster thing with some bands like Deafheaven and UADA leading the way for those who need to be able to say “Oh, so you like Flaming Lips? Well, if you need to, I always find it to poppy, for me it needs to be bleak and dark, so my taste is much more refined than yours!” Snobs at their worst, right? By now they have turned their back on the genre again and the loners are together again without them. Some might find that disappointing, others don’t, the author figures himself somewhere in the middle. I can understand the awesome-ness of the success bands like those mentioned have had because that also means that they were able to benefit from it in some way. Probably not monetary but maybe it made it easier for them to travel the world and that might be the biggest thing for them anyway.
“Djinn” has everything it needs to be one of the most successful black metal albums of 2020 – hell, it even deserves to be! It’s moving and melodious, it bellows and bites, it shows rage and refined songwriting skills with a knack for transporting Thin Lizzy into the genre without tuning it too low but with just the right amount of dirt and grid. UADA and its mastermind Jake Superchi show an anthemic version of black metal that no one has waited for, but that no one can turn its back on either. If you can do that while listening to the title track or to “Forestless”, tell me how, as I would like to get those earworms out of my head. 

folk / ambient

And to round out this trio of awesome Eisenwald releases throughout the last couple of months, we must have a look at this wonderful release by my favorite American Ambient Folk duo, Osi and the Jupiter. Their new EP “Appalachia” is a wonderful supplement to an already brilliant body of work as these 21 minutes are literally wonderful and at first glance do not fit the Eisenwald roster at all. However, bear in mind that Eisenwald also releases Mosaic and its folk tales. The Ohio duo here uses their home Appalachia in Eastern Ohio as inspiration and in some way also as their musical mindmap. The songs are windy, they are sparsely instrumented with not more than some strings, a some acoustic guitar lines and sometimes something that sounds like a huge organ, but which actually is Sean’s synth that’s also used for the few drones. The central piece on “Appalachia” is certainly the final track “The Binding Will of Mountains” with its nearly 13 minutes resembling the slow approach towards the Appalachian mountains and its sometimes sunny, oftentimes dark peaks. The forests in this region of the second-highest mountain ridge in North America also surely gave the guys some inspiration. Sean strums his guitar as gentle as Kakophonix plays his cello. That the two have a very deep connection is obvious when Kakophonix seldom but highly effectively joins Sean in his vocals; when both sing together there is some Cantrell-Staley  magic going on, even though their voices sound nothing like the Seattle superstars, it is more their connection that is so strong and moving. When the final track opens up for its second half there is this short, short pause as if the pioneers are preparing for their final move up the mountain and against the wind that is so cold against their cheeks. 

When we look at all these releases it becomes obvious that Eisenwald is not interested in releasing big-selling records, most of their records are not putting up numbers big enough to make a living off it. But their roster and its songs show a label doing it for the soul, their own and their audience’s. They all buy into the idea that music is a part of nature and our environment and that we should therefore treat it with respect and care. We shall not simply rage over it, but we should it respect it – just like we should respect people of any belief system and personality. Basically its orientation is nothing short of the Golden Rule – treat everyone like you want to be treated by everyone. Oh, by the way – did I mention that they also just simply release some of the finest records lately?


​Thorsten

black metal / dark folk

O. is another example of a highly productive musician that has been challenging the notions and limits of modern music. He is a member of Lubbert Das, Turia and Solar Temple and heading his one-man-project black metal project Iskandr. The guitarist seems to be overflowing with brilliant music as Iskandr’s new, glorious EP “Gelderse Poort” is already his second memorable release in 2020, after Turia’s “Degen van Licht”, out early this year. 

Now, of course, there are similarities in sound and approach, mostly between Turia and Iskandr, with the former’s collaboration with Fluisteraars “De Oord” setting the tone and idea behind Iskandr’s new EP which also focuses on O.’s home region in western Holland, where the mighty Rhine splits into two rivers and thus makes for a very significant region. “Gelderse Poort” is O.’s image for the river which splits right at the border between Holland and Germany and therefore forms a kind of gate into the Netherlands. The region, Gelderland, is where his roots are and where his inner calm lies. However, for O. this gate is not only a geographical metaphor but also a spiritual one, as this is the region into which he was born and where he will die; it’s his gateway from one world to the next and onward. 

On his new EP – two awesome tracks of nearly 24 minutes playing time – he is talking about these roots in the opening title track. That track showcases all of his trademark sounds – very windy intros, like the winds howling across Gelderland but on the other side also very calm and opening up. When remembering the last Iskandr-record “Euprosopon”, one surely remembers the cut-up cover of a Gothic church. That sacral building was also mirrored with a kind of sacral sound – wide, high, opening up towards the above; very unlike the barren, deep, graven regular black metal lo-if-sound. Not that “Euprosopon” was a hi-fi-record – but the structures and soundscape resembled the cover perfectly. And this very sound is also the key to the track “Gelderse Poort”, as the song was recorded during the same session as the last full-length. Therefore, the similar sound structure with a very wide and opening second half is a result of the songwriting as well as of the recording. 

BUT – a review of a two-track record must of course also talk about that second track. And o’ my O.! “Het Graf” (“The Grave”) is an instant ‘hit’ - very folksy, very doomy, with a semi-acoustic guitar basis and in a the same line as some parts on the latest Afsky and Fluisteraars records. The vocals are a spoken-word-performance of the poem of the same name by Dutch writer Rhijnvis Feith delivered by O.’s father. The poem, written in 1792, talks about the river and even more about death and the inevitability of it. We cannot escape it, we all must face it. And we also see it all around us all the time, with people dear and not-so-dear around us dying. How do the remaining react to these deaths? Do they cry and mourn? Or do they face life again quickly? After roughly 7.30 minutes the song goes into a dark post-punk direction with the initial guitar line still playing in the background until the is a recurrence of the beginning and of O.’s father. This is dark folk or folk-influenced post-punk at its very, ultimate best. 

If you then think back on the duplicity of the “poort”, the gate – then you will see that O. has done it once again: his songs resemble this duplicity perfectly with both tracks using the “gate” as a double metaphor – for the region and all its glorious landscapes as well as for the gate between worlds and lives. All this accompanied by some of the most ferocious and yet open and warm black metal and post-punk one will listen to this year. His output remains scathingly good and astonishingly perfect. 


Thorsten

folk / indie / americana

From Glasgow we received the ep Comes a Time from a guy called Mark W Georgsson. In a previous live he was a bass player in an indie rock band called The Velveteens Saints. Not sure if that band still exists but Mark decided to make his own music and based on the result that was a real good idea. In 2016 he released a first genuine… country track. Country from Glasgow. Thinking about Glasgow we can’t really see how he can get in the right mindset but the music from that period seems indeed to come straight from the south of the VS. Only his accent betrays him. In 2017 he released a full album that was full of this type of Americana music. Since it became a bit quiet 

Apparently Mark was busy making music all along. Because mid august he released this ep called Comes a time. The goal was to come again with country, but that idea failed because on this ep we hear a lot of different music styles. The downside is that the ep misses a bit of cohesion but we forgive him, because there are some really nice tracks.

If you try it we would certainly recommend Ode  the Rvanna, the opening track. That was written a while ago but the lyrics changed a few times. Eventually the lyrics were based on an Instagram conversation with a landscape photographer from the Faroe Islands. The photographer was called Rvanna. Listening to it we thought about a desolate landscape with misty mountains and a rare bird as the only sign of life. If you need references, think about the atmospheric sound from Daniel Lanois on Acadie. 
​
A song that might instantly charm a lot of people is One a kind. It is demonstrating a more poppy side of Georgsson. The song will make you think about Paul McCartney and that is no coincidence. He wrote the song one Sunday morning after seeing one of the most beautiful women that he’d ever seen walk into a bar the night before. When he was writing it he thought the song needed to sound a bit like McCartney so he asked the help of a friend who wrote the perfect piano –lines to achieve the goal. 

A last song we would recommend is Waiting For you. Again it is something completely different, again a more up-time track. We were spontaneously thinking about the almost forgotten 90 ties band The Boo Radleys or even a bit of Mika. We can‘t really explain but we are convinced that with some airplay this song would be picked up by many people.  The song is about realizing that it’s time to do what you really need to do, and then actually going ahead and doing it.  This song was why Georggson decided to create the ep and we are thankful for the fact that he did it 

The ep is released via Last night from Glasgow and can be found on all streaming platforms. If you prefer vinyl -like we do, it is nice to know that there are some rare copies on coloured vinyl for those that order fast. 


Wout

grunge / stoner rock

Iceland’s scene is very likely one of the strongest worldwide as we are talking about a country with roughly 360,000 inhabitants and yet we all know so many bands from Iceland pushing the brim for modern music further and further. Keelrider is another one of those, although they most likely will not see as much attention as Sigur Ros, Björk or the whole Icelandic black metal scene because they are Stoner Grungers with a twist. In 2018 they published their debut album “North” and last year they published two singles from their upcoming album “Second Wind”. While “Too Far Gone” is in parts a very nice melange of Alice in Chains-vocals and Soundgarden-stoner riffs, “Sun” is much more interesting because the band some a little more variety when it comes to time signatures and giving the guitar lines more space to breathe. If you are into stoner rock and grunge, this band is something right for you! 

post metal

Post-Metal from Italy. Most foreigners automatically associate it with Postvorta but some, a little deeper in and a little longer might remember the name Calendula, the sextet from Parma, which released an EP (2011) and a full-length (2012) a while ago. After some changes concerning line-up and musical direction, they released a 25-minute-song in November which definitely doesn’t fit to the title “De Brevitate Vitae” - it’s not brevis (brief) at all. It is quite a monster with a lot of dynamic changes and oscillates between dynamic driving drums and some really clever, counteracting guitar-work following the long intro, which sometimes hints at a bit of Tool. The vocals are pretty good, they also use some samples to give it a more differentiated sonic outline. Something that can be criticized is the sound as the partially trashy Lo-Fi sound doesn’t really fit a record as ambitious as this one, although on the other side it fits to the proclaimed role models  – 90s post-rock bands such as Slint (noticeable in the very effective guitar motif after the first real break). If the guys follow this path, we might have two Italian associations with the term Post-Metal.

electronic 

Svart Records is one of the finest labels when it comes to hard, harsh music, most people know about that. Most people do not know that they also have an electronic sub-label – Svartronix which again is very open-minded. A few weeks ago they released the debut song by A Heart Beats “Dazes the Mind” which is pop music that fits perfectly in any 80s mix of songs by some tropical house producer. This songs purvey a kind of Caribbean calypso feeling but their sex-appeal derives to a large extent from the intriguing vocals of Paile who once was a member of Beastmilk. His delivery is very nice and especially the chorus is so funky that one automatically feels his feet moving, but the line also has some depth “It dazes the mind / and numbs the tongue”. The beats produced by Tuuki are layered with some space basslines in the sense of some more synth-driven Daft Punk and the beat itself is shuffling a bit, so that the sunny, opening sounds give the song a holiday feeling without the stupidity. A promising debut song, let’s hope A Heart Beats and Svartronix has some more servings.

doom / death metal

Russian death doom act Intaglio released a demo version of a new track at the end of last year and in some way, the beauty lies in the rhythm. Many voices will now scream that the rhythm is nothing particular new to the genre, as the slow, dragging rhythm of the song is really quite normal, but the way that the strings connect to it, support it in certain passages, yeah, even form it from time to time, that is really breathtaking – the Gothic attitude it brings to the song turns it into a remarkable one. The lyrics, speaking about the overwhelming character of a memory of death which overshadows everything else, are delivered in regular death metal style. Another standout feature is the use of the use of an upright bass that is tuned so well, that you can hear each tap and each ring.
In some way, three pretty singular metal genres are amalgamated into one pretty dense net of emotions that will leave no open ear without imprinting a memory of itself on the listener. If this is a first sign of a new album then one might keep Intaglio in mind.

punk

Everything about this 7” screams “Old school! Old school!”, the cover (seemingly a reverse from the classic Minor Threat discography cover that also was adopted by Rancid several years ago), the cover b-side, the black-white style, the sound, everything! But first things first: The revived band released a good album in 2018 and last December followed with this 7” out on Heartworm Press. The title track is a new shotgun blast somewhere between Zeke, MC5, The Clash, Turbonegro and Black Flag (although one must say, that only the vocals sometimes hint at Rollins) – definitely a good track. The b-side is a well-made cover of “Left for Dead” by The Lemonheads another one of these late 80s punk bands that turned more and more to indie-rock. The cover is good and shows a different side to American Nightmare. However, there is one thing that is lacking in this release and that is the teenage angst that made AN famous. The despair, the sadness, the melancholy – not there. On the other hand, that might drive the listener to despair and achieves the same effect.

avant garde / folk

Dog Tunnel Records

There are genres that seemingly are so heavily steeped in tradition and customs that it is hard to imagine to hear a new sound in them. Take Irish Folk for example; most of us at first might associate it with pub nights somewhere between the Dubliners and Christy Moore (at best) or Michael Flatley and Enya (at worst). But to combine the traditional folk instruments bodhran, flute, violin, and guitar with a wall of sound, lots of spoken word (not cheerfully and rhythmically, but rather intimidating and fierceful) is something rarely heard before. Tuatha is a fierce project that will leave some of us open-mouthed. Formed in early 2019 and already a rising star on the scene, the septet uses old Irish tales from the Middle Ages and Gaelic Dindsenchas (short poems describing certain places) to deepen their already impressive style. In parts, their unrelentless approach reminds one of the approach Archive and SubRosa took in totally different musical landscapes. This here is unique, bewitching and typical Irish yet also totally un-Irish. Folks, give Tuatha a listen!

sludge / doom

A quartet from Phoenix, Arizona with a very grainy, heavy sound, Mosara released their debut demo last November. It shall be a prelude to a record which is in the making and should see the light of day before the end of the year; of course the demo should also draw interest from labels and I think it might: The musical soundscape is strongly influenced by a lot of proto-metal like Sabbath, Blue Cheer, but also by classic doom bands like Electric Wizard or Cough – that means, you get what you expect, low-tuned, richly-distorted, grainy, a bit lofi-ish doom sounds with a tinge of sludge influences (most audible on the second track “Clay and Iron”). Sometimes the howls and growls could be a bit fiercer and less despaired because, sometimes, Tony Gallegos (ex-Twingiant) is a bit too clear. Nevertheless the sound is great, as if someone mated Fu Manchu with Sabbath and their offspring was left in the desert with a guitar as the only means of communication. The riffs are dragging, the bass is dominant, the drums are supportive – all good in the Arizona desert. 

death metal / black metal / doom / noise / grindcore

Noise bastard? Yeah. Death metal? Sometimes. Grindcore? For sure. Doomy Gloom? You bet. All of that and more is “Tellurian Insurgency” by Ploughshare. With their third release in as many years (after 2017’s “Literature of Piss” and 2018’s acclaimed “In Offal, Salvation”) the quartet from Australia’s capital Canberra once again proves that the bar is always too low for them. Excellent musicians with a highly complex understanding of how music works they show that extreme metal must also rely on atmosphere that sometimes exists between the chords and blastbeasts. A great deal of the attraction of this band is the vocals, which never sound cheesy but quite on point. This EP also features a remix of their standout song, the title track of “In Offal, Salvation”, which shows that it is even possible to give this dark nightmare of a song an even more desperate twist. One thing that becomes clear throughout the record is how important good drumming is for such a kind of music as it must set the tone for everyone. If the guys can keep up their productivity we should await a new heir to the extreme metal throne in 2020.

industrial

Describing this Oakland, CA, quartet is not that easy and not that difficult at the same time. Their sound relies heavily on synths, samples but also on guitar, bass and drums. They cross constantly between electronic noise (aka industrial) and post-punk’ish avantgarde sounds. Initiated in 2013 and having independently released already a bunch of records, Lament Cityscape set out to publish three EPs in 2020, each following some red thread and yet also standing out on its own. Something that they share with some of the pioneers of this kind of sonic assault (Godflesh, Killing Joke, Author & Punisher) are the harsh sounds that sometimes remind one of buoys warning the oncoming ships of the nearby rocks and sandbanks which here are symbolized by the rough drum attacks. In parts, this is a good record for those who like Godflesh’s Streetcleaner a bit less polished and a bit more straightforward. Partially, one is left behind by a lack of surprise, but fans of industrial noises and harsh synth-driven drums will really like this.

black metal

At first, the band’s name might sound like a nice pun on 80s karate flic “Bloodsport” (with the amazing multiple Academy Award winning actor Jean-Claude van Shakespeare) but when listening to this new face on renown Swedish Meta label Blood Harvest it becomes clear that the idea of a fungi which sits parasitically on its host and feeds of it before finally killing it works perfectly within the black metal community. It also works nicely because the record to it is really good and leaves one’s ears with an immediate wish to press replay because of its clever changes in mood, dynamics and tempi. The record (especially the second track “Cede to the Saprophyte”) is like a nice blend of groove metal and black metal with the emphasis, of course, on the latter. Thematically, the record presents the idea of the fungal mass on this planet slowly but certainly taking over and destroying all other organisms, a new take on the apocalyptic visions presented by bands like Botanist or Arx Atrata. For a band that only came together in 2018, this is really somewhat impressive. 


​Thorsten

folk / rock / country / alternative

This album has been poking me in the elbow for a few days now. And I mean that quite literally. It fell off the pile of albums to be reviewed and landed right next to me. There it has been laying for a while until I got tired of the corners of the digipac poking me. So, perhaps now is a good time to finally check this out and see if I should give the album a spot on my shelves. One look at the biography certainly raises the bar. I see people like Rudy Trouvé, Nicolas Rombouts (ex-Dez Mona) and Stef Kamil Carlens (ex-dEUS, Zita Swoon)... Those are big names to throw around. But let's face it, Matt Watts is not a newcomer, on the very contrary.

Watts recorded his first album at the age of fifteen, moved from Montana (US) to Antwerp (BE) four years later, got into contact with the Belgian alternative scene and became a member of several rock, noise and punk bands. 'Queens' is produced by Stef Kamil Carlens and Nicolas Rombouts and features (former) members of acclaimed Belgian bands such as Moondog Jr, Zita Swoon, Eriksson Delcroix, Dez Mona, Guido Belcanto, and King Dick. And yes, all of that is audible on this album.

From the first notes of 'Sha La La Jim' you'll realize that you're dealing with a talented singer-songwriter, backed by a group of professional buddies. Americana, rock & roll, country and folk are being mixed into outstanding songs, often emotional, sometimes gritty and dark. A whole bunch of names comes to mind, including South San Gabriel, Morphine, Ween, dEUS and, in 'Smoke All Around My Brain', even Elvis, embodied by the 'Suspicious Minds' like guitar licks.

The most gutsy tune on this album is the cover of Michael Jackson's 'Billy Jean'. Slow, almost eerie, almost suited to appear in a David Lynch movie. Yet, my personal favorite is 'Lay Your Ears', where the entire band manages to bring out the best in themselves, resulting in a immersive piece of alternative americana rock. Or how about the uplifting country tune 'There I Have Come For You'. Odd but excellent, like most of this album.

But apparently there is also some place for electronics. 'Penniless Carpenters' comes up with rhythmic sequencers guiding a mid-tempo country rock song. For a number of reasons this is one my favorites here. Coming to think of it, pretty much nothing on this album is what you'd call "my kind of music" but I truly enjoy most of it. I expect some of these tunes to pop-up in StuBru's 'De Afrekening' (if that still exists). Check it out. This is pretty darn cool.


​Serge

ambient / folk

A band that is as much Wardruna, Heilung and Tenhi as it is Boards of Canada, Plaid and Tim Hecker is definitely a very interesting idea. Often there are musical realms whose ideas or rather the concepts which they indirect represent are in a way diametric. Pagan folk is a music tied to a world long gone, lost before the Dark Ages and the final rise of Christianity after the first millenium AD. Ambient artists on the other hand are very often associated with a futuristic idea of mankind, a mankind post-mankind where a kind of mechanical, spherical interpretation of human life and interaction has become the norm. 

Now sometimes a band can combine such disconnected realms and thus challenge our concepts of music and what is stands for. Osi and the Jupiter, the two-man project from the woods and hills of Ohio is such a band. Fronted by multi-instrumentalist/singer Sean Kratz, the band is able to purvey such an authentic image of Scandinavian pagan music that it is not primarily ritualistic like Heilung’s but rather contemplative like Wardruna’s that one can hardly believe that Kratz and his companion Kakophonix (what a stage name!) are from North America. You need to listen very closely to the vocal parts in order to hear some kind of American accent. 

The attentive reader will challenge my notion of an ambient act – and that might even be true, but there are moments of ambient in this record. Listen to the soft pluckering and spacious background for opening track “Fjörgyn” or the intro to “Nordlige Eik Tre”. This is definitely ambient but they are so perfectly surrounded by natural sounds like a violin or even some field recordings that it is really hard to grasp the electronic nature of these sounds. And that is something where I must admit being a bit awestruck by Osi and the Jupiter. They combine these two worlds and in some way it makes sense. The pagan origins of their music and the post-Christian idea of ambient music blend in their denial of values dictated by the Roman church and all its antecedents. This is a kind of post-modern pagan music, connecting two different sound systems with equally anti-Roman ideals and an idea of mankind trying to look for its lost destiny. An idea deeply rooted in the notion that man must live in connection to nature – but not deny the beauty of modern achievements. Eisenwald Tonschmiede has released yet another eclectic non-hectic musical masterpiece. 


Thorsten

folk / experimental / classical

Another return to the impressive stable of Sound In Silence is 'Human, Insignificant' by Sweeney, the solo project of Jason Sweeney (Panoptique Electrical, Other People’s Children and Simpático). Sweeney has been making music for over twenty years, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends.

With this album, spanning around twenty-six minutes, Sweeney delivers eight emotional songs, all gritty, gloomy and accompanied with piano and soundscapes. The result is something so down to earth that you would think it's unearthly. It's folk, shoegaze and ballad pop, but most of all, it's an assault on your tear glands.

The eight songs here all seem to follow a similar path. In the back ground, you can find unidentified noises and soundscapes while the piano is set on "minimal". Then, Sweeney unleashes his fragile, emotional voice. His vocal style is something between singing and crying, which for some people will hit the exact right spot. For others, this might be a bit too intimate to enjoy to the fullest. For those, I will recommend the title track, which could be one of those illegal recordings of Elvis jamming solo on a drunk Sunday night.

In all, 'Human, Insignificant' is a daring album. It could be a big risk to bask in this melancholic sound because truth is, this is not a happy, joyful album. Yet, if you love what people like Luka Bloom do, plus love to dwell into gloomy classical music, this one will hit your right in the feels. Just listen to the alternative tear jerker 'Desire, Decayed' and you'll know what I mean. If you're in for a 26 minutes lasting emotional cleansing, this album is definitely a must-have...


​Serge

post rock / folk

You might think that in these days of musical abundance, the post rock genre could no longer produce anything refreshing and unique, right? Well, probably. I mean, if bands experiment much further they would eventually become another genre. But, then again, sometimes something fascinating appears. 

Hailing from Norway, Monograf blends post rock with traditional folk music, something I've previously heard black metal bands do. The result is an album that needs to grow on you, needs time to be explored and absorbed completely. But once you take the time to do that, you'll be in love.

The album opens with 'Grails', an elaborate post rock tune featuring a plethora of instruments. In that aspect, the music somewhat reminds me of Wang Wen, in the sense that both bands take their time to narrate and compose brilliant pieces of music. Another band that comes to mind is Sigur Ros, mainly because of the vocal aspects. That's probably another thing that sets Monograf apart from many other bands, the use of voices. Title track 'Nadir' is a song, one that takes you back to ancient times but also fits right on a modern post rock stage.

Yeps, that was a little hint towards our friends from Dunk! festival. In my imagination, I see plenty of post rock bands play on one of those stages because let's face it, Dunk! is that best thing to discover and enjoy this kind of music. But let's be honest, a tune like 'The Golden Calf' with enchant  the entire forest with its fiddles, it's emotive atmosphere and it's unique sound. Check out the video below and judge for yourself, if you like. This music is so well composed that it seems to come from a different time, or place.

Between 'The Golden Calf' and closer 'Horde' a short 'Intermission' appears. This song also takes you back to the Norwegian forests and times long gone. But the absolute magnum opus of this excellent album is 'Horde'. Opening with ambient soundscapes, this think slowly evolves into a sonic adventure, second to none. In all, this album is pretty much uncompareable. Nothing comes close to the elaborate palette of Monograf. I'm sure that this release will gain this band a heap of followers and I'm sure it will lift many people's spirits.


​Serge

dungeon synth / folk / ambient

Inheritor is an album released on December 1, by a dungeon synth artist, known only by the alias of Urrnil. A very concise album – only half an hour long –, Inheritor has ten tracks: 1) Thunder Howls; 2) Silver Paths; 3) The Ravenous Might; 4) Estë; 5) Born of Stone; 6) Worthy Inheritor; 7) (Wrath) Brought Upon; 8) Blood Written Oaths; 9) A Forest Where Time is no Lord (Remastered); 10) Hidden, Forgotten, Sequestered (Seamless Mix). With a great and profusely dense medieval soundscape, this album displays a very dynamic, diluted and epic style, that definitely establishes more ambitious and personal standards for the genre. Discreetly, but passionately consecrating its lurid and expansive musical layout as an audacious exemplar of an expressively more modernist and authorial quest for stylistic features, Inheritor emerges as an interesting work of art, whose sound is abundant in innovative and authentic elements, vigorously injecting a vivacious outlook into a genre that is in constant need of reshaping itself. 

With a natural, vigorous and creative splendor, the music of Urrnil is an esoteric voyage to the outer limits of time; to glorious periods of hereditary dynasties, distant realms, equestrian nobilities and majestic kings. A place where a sensible, grandiloquent and tender reality do exist, all elements of chivalry are brought back to the present, in a deeply surreal sonorous journey of lucid and invariable conquests, where the essence and the integrity of life are rescued by the genuine benevolence of noble spirits. 

Formidably capturing the imperative essence of a time full of splendorous cosmogonies and codes of honor, Inheritor definitely propitiates to its audience an undeniable return to a glorious past. With a consistent, restless and expansive, but gracefully imaginative and captivating sound, Urrnil delivers on this album a veraciously relevant and genuine collection of medieval symphonies, that strikes the spirit with the beauty of lost centuries, and the simplicity of an ephemeral moment of sincere human exhilaration.    

Definitely one of the best dungeon synth albums that I have heard, Inheritor doesn’t display the limitations and the stagnant dispositions usually so prevalent in the genre. With a more dynamic, sober and vivacious style, this is a very enjoyable album, whose sound is a pleasure to hear, all the way through. With versatile qualities and a very sensible intuitive timing, its harmonies are simple, but graciously aggrandizing, and its virtuous melodic polyphonies are beautifully extended into an everlasting universe of salutary serenities, that becomes more and more cohesive, as the music gradually unfolds its own singular, infinite and altruistic essence. 

 

Wagner