Neige et Noirceur - Natura Mortis Sonoris

NEIGE ET NOIRCEUR - Natura Mortis Sonoris
2013
Dusktone

At first glance, Natura Mortis Sonoris is like an odd ball in Neige et Noirceur's discography. First, this is not a black metal album and it will seem out of place for those who have only heard the post-2010 albums (especially La Seigneurie des Loups, and Hymnes de la Montagne Noire). Second, this is a compilation of songs taken from different albums, EPs and demos: out of their original context, the atmosphere these songs used to create is somehow lost, or at least heavily altered.

All of Neige et Noirceur's albums/EPs that I know had an atmospheric black metal 'thing' at their core. There were drums, guitars, and lyrics. Natura Mortis Sonoris goes the opposite direction. It is shapeless, boneless, but scary nonetheless. The songs are either excerpts, extended, or simply different versions from the ones we find on the original albums. They cover many of the pre-2010 releases, starting with the very first 2005 demo, Pour te Dire la Fin. Like a hand-picked selection of monochromatic Smarties, they are the dark tones that dressed the original albums in their mourning clothes.

This compilation may be a curved ball for Neige et Noirceur, but it achieves its goal perfectly. It shows us what stands under the ghoulish atmospheric black metal cloak: melancholy, solitude, fear, and darkness. These feelings have been moving every single release, but on Natura Mortis Sonoris they are pure.

On the one hand, there are very few beats or musical tempos throughout the 15 songs, except maybe for "3rd Hymne Fragment", "Aux Portes de la Crypte" or "Loudun (part 1)". Even when "Orlok" kicks in with a brief and distant blastbeat, it is covered by a heavy layer of keyboards. On the other hand, this compilation contains a diversity of noises, instruments, and artistic directions. There are footsteps, wind, animal sounds, bells, keyboards, acoustic guitars, off voices (movie excerpts), echoes, and space/void. The songs come in and out like fading waves, or like feverish nightmares that keeps pulling us back into an endless night.

For an atmospheric album, this is refreshing and very interesting. It is as dynamic as an album from This is Past, yet as haunting as Wolvserpent. All of that plus a unique, personal aesthetic.

Natura Mortis Sonoris reminded me why I liked Neige et Noirceur in the first place. The sculptured atmospheres are very suggestive: keyboard and synth sounds are definitely artificial, while animated sounds (animals, humans, wind) are plenty. Whether we call it occult, scary, cartoonish or colourful, it definitely has a strong character.

While I really enjoy this album - just as much as any of Neige et Noirceur's full lengths - I find the songs too short. Atmosphere requires time; in order to lose myself into a dark melancholic album, I need a catharsis of more than 3 or 4 minutes. Sure enough, there is a 12+ minutes "Loin des Hommes, Prêt [sic] des Bêtes", but I feel that more of these would have allowed the listener to dive deeper into the Neige et Noirceur world. This is unfortunate, since everything else is flawless.

http://dusktone.bigcartel.com
http://www.dusktone.eu
http://www.zimondofin.com/neigeetnoirceur/

Warground - Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness (EP)

WARGROUND - Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness
2013
Depressive Illusions Records

The title says it all. Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is the soundtrack for a season in damnation. It is gloomy, foggy, chilly, and static like a curtain of black heavy clouds that doesn't want to move away from the sun. However, this is not a doom, a funeral doom nor a black metal album, but a collection of plain atmospheric compositions.

It comes in an A5 dvd-case format, perfect to conjure the vastness of the music. Inside, we find three "songs" of 7 to 9 minutes that speak the same language. First song "Broken" is like a fall, a magnetic call of the Great Void, evoken by waves of keys/synth. It is monolithic, offering almost no variations and an unclear structure. Heavy yet vaporous, it brings the listener into a state of unbalance. "The Darkened Path of Sadness" follows, with a few reverberated notes in the dark, muffled by a veil of atmospheric long keys notes. The sky clears a bit, but only to discover that the sun is gone: it's nighttime, and it's cold. The trilogy of soundscapes ends with "A Land Taken by the Nothing", probably my favorite of the three compositions. Here we are presented with the essence of the title. We find a few delicate notes, gently laid like faeries corpses resting on fallen leaves. I would not qualify it as depressive, but rather as ominous because of the black atmosphere weighing on us through repetitive waves of keys.

In my book, an atmospheric album needs a lot of qualificatives. Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is what I would call a tunnel of emotions. These are monolithic and monochromatic creations. There is a limited range of instruments involved and the structures are relatively straightforward. When I listen to these songs, I feel absorbed into a vortex, but not drained of emotions, as if the songs are channels of thoughts rather than seeds of negativity. Constricted in the middle of the night, the songs capture something we do not exactly understand, something that has been morphed into sounds. In other words, Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness is hypnotic and contemplative. Warground aptly says about its music: "There are those paths inside oneself that dare not be followed".

The 3 songs could have been soundtracks to heavier atmospheric metal tracks, or sublime outros on albums. Nonetheless, released together, the three soundscapes make an interesting ensemble.

Sorrowful Sounds of Emptiness comes as an interesting step in the Warground discography. The one-man raw black metal name has been in existence since 2012 and has two other releases already. Check these out as well, for they would appeal to fans of the raw depressive black metal cult entity Nortt. Overall, I find interesting to have a different look at Warground, and hear this exploration of sounds.

https://www.facebook.com/WargroundBand
http://depressiveillusions.com/

Loviatar - Druid's Curse (EP)

LOVIATAR - Druid's Curse
2013
Indie

Druid's Curse is the third installment in the Loviatar EP trilogy. About four months after the previous Widow's Flame and a year and a half after the Eternal Sons debut, we find another 3-songs cd, housed in a digi sleeve, with a similar layout, the same line-up, and a similar length. The least we can say is that Loviatar is consistent and approaches the construction of its EPs very seriously. Both on the visual and the musical point of view, Druid's Curse strenghtens very efficiently the band's discography, like an affirmation of its song writing and band imagery.

The fantasy continues: Loviatar's world rocks around mythical characters, as displayed by the beautiful artwork and the tracks' name.

The powerful "Curse of the Hamadryad" launches the journey with a thick wall of sound. All the instruments are burning hot and signal that we are in for a ride. The drum's skins are more silky and defined than before, the guitars have been pulled back a little bit in the mix, and there is a creamy coat of reverb tying them to the vocals' effects. Incredibly good and catchy for a post-metal / doom act, vocals are clean and upfront. The bass guitar makes use of a slight distortion and can be easily distinguished with its rich bottom and guitar picking, a sound and technique that reminds me of Mouth of the Architect, Cult of Luna and Buried Inside. It sometimes slides up and down, follows the bass drum chirurgically, or walks around like a punk rock band, adding interesting colors to the music. As for the guitars, they cover the rest of the spectrum, from left to right, from North to the South, with either atmospheric, piccolo, or straightforward playing.

The guitar work is probably best illustrated in "Elephant Graveyard", the second and instrumental track. While the bass gets clean and modest, the guitars take all the place available. They start with a few atmospheric, isolated notes, building gradually an emotive charge until it reaches its apex with lots of cymbals and chords, and dies again. When arrangements are this good, the music speaks for itself.

The doom gland is sollicitated anew on "Frost Druid", the third and last track of the EP. It has a few dragging and bluesy notes, some eruption into heavier post-metal, with bits of piccolo picking and sparks of hi-hat cutting through the reverb coating of the mix - all good ingredients to approach traditional doom while staying away from the depressive tone of it. This song is a direct dialogue with "Eternal Famine", the first song on the first EP: not only because of the doomy riffs, but also because of the "oh-oh-oh" chants. Positioned last on the EP, it is a clever reference addressed to those who have been following the band so far, coming full circle with Loviatar's EP trilogy.

Druid's Curse is 12 minutes well invested. There are no missteps, nothing is lacking, and nothing is redundant. It is without a doubt the best of the three Loviatar EPs; something you can spin any time, any day, without getting tired of it. It is also one of the best examples of Mike Bond's recording and production skills.

Druid's Curse is definitely one of the best Canadian metal EPs of 2013.

http://loviatar.bandcamp.com/album/druids-curse
http://loviatardoom.com/

Sombres Forêts - La Mort du Soleil

SOMBRES FORÊTS – La mort du soleil
2013
Sepulchral Productions

Métal noir, the Quebec self identification for francophone black metal, has become quite a fruitful nest. From Forteresse to Chasse-Galerie, and from Mysothéisme to Neige et Noirceur, it offers a large variety of genres – covering all of the orthodox, raw, pagan and atmospheric ends of the spectrum. Far from being second grade stagnant or nostalgic, the métal noir scene got the attention of a worldwide horde of black metallers around the world for its fine line-ups and avant-garde bands.

Quebec City’s Sombres Forêts is no newcomer. The offspring of brainchild Annatar, it built a solid reputation over two albums, including 2008’s Royaume de Glace. Annatar also participated with fellow label mates Neptune and Icare from Gris to a well-received side project, Miserere Luminis in 2009. Moving the journey further, La Mort du Soleil, the latest release under the Sombres Forêts moniker, brings these ideas to a new level.

La Mort du Soleil falls right into the atmospheric black metal category. Mid paced, it breathes all the way through, with a balance between heavy instrumentation and melancholic piano or guitar passages. With an absence of blast beats and very few moments of piccolo guitars attack, we get closer to latter-days Drudkh (for example on “L’Éther”) than any post-metal take on atmospheric black metal. Layers and layers of nature-like sounds, including thunderstorms, chilly winds and unknown sounds have been added, as well as additional vocals, extra guitars, and percussions. There is an impressive mastery of reversed guitars incorporation across the landscape, and rich yet delicate coats of reverb added to the music, reminding me vaguely of Arcana Coelestia and Dolorian. At certain moments, I even thought I could hear the very subtle guitar familiarity with some French avant-garde black metal bands such as Deathspell Omega (“La Disparition”).

This tasty mix of technical approaches is serving well the general atmosphere proposed by the album. Deeply melancholic, it navigates the seas of 19^th Century Romanticism. The artwork itself, designed by French artist Fursy Teyssier, is a manifest homage to J.M. William Turner’s (1775-1851) paintings. Dark, stormy and indefinite, but also beautifully powerful, it depicts perfectly the moods and atmosphere found on the eloquently-titled La Mort du Soleil.

Sombres Forêts’ third album is grandiose and its greater merit is that it will undoubtly appeal to a larger audience than métal noir bands usually do. For many, this will probably be the first atmospheric black metal album they listen to and enjoy. For many others (myself included), I think it is an album that continues the path already laid by a few others, including Gris. On that note, it would be hard not to draw comparisons with the latter: both bands are using trademark suffering screams, both released their latest album through Sepulchral Productions on the same day, and both crossed path recently in Miserere Luminis. Check out both bands, and pick up a copy of La Mort du Soleil.

www.sepulchralproductions.com
www.sepulchralproductions.bigcartel.com
www.sombresforets.blogspot.ca

Dopethrone - III

DOPETHRONE - III
2012
Indie

As its title suggests, III is the third album from Dopethrone. At this stage we know exactly what to expect from the Montréal trio: a dirty cocktail made with the crushing heaviness of sludge, the trippy grooves of stoner metal, and the general simplicity and darkness of doom. You only have to think about Electric Wizard (where the band took its name) to get a general idea of the music, although it evolved into something else not unfamiliar with the likes of Sleep or Zoroaster. Being precursors of other stoner/doom bands on the Montréal metal scene, and an inspiration for many (including Buffalo Theory Mtl), Dopethrone developed a cult following and generated an interest abroad by touring extensively.

The title III is somewhat appropriate for it follows closely the previous two offerings. III is all about continuity, bringing no suprises, and slowly moving one step further to make it even better than before. This time around, Dopethrone got a more defined production; something we notice immediately on the mid-hi spectrum as the cymbals tend to be brighter and cover more than before. For the rest, we have the exact same style of music, about the same number of songs and length as on the previous Dark Foil, and the oh-so-good filthy patches of dirt stuck on their guitars. The themes seem to continue their journey onto the seas of dope and murder - we even find a cool little sampler speech on "Storm Reefer" about marijuana, set against a backdrop of dirty bass and drum.

Playing a Dopethrone album make your house go humid and warm every time. Left alone the rings of smoke, we could call it swamp metal... It's nice and ugly, its moving and depressed at the same time. I find the sheer heaviness of the band to be highly addictive, in good parts due to the granular distortion of the guitars, the low tuning, and the monstrous screaming. The riffs and grooves have this rockish twist that make'em easily enjoyable. And with such a beautiful cover artwork, one can't avoid the Dopethrone.

Check it out.
http://dopethrone.bandcamp.com/

Skagos - Anarchic

SKAGOS - Anarchic
2013
Eternal Warfare / The Flenser Records

Don't judge a book by its cover. Many people's first reaction, looking at Skagos' latest album cover, would be to think we are on British soil, with such a title as Anarchic (God Saves the Queen!), and an overused illustration of William Blake (1757-1827), a British national artist. Based in British Columbia, Skagos has embraced various personal causes and received random or unexpected coverages, including MetalSucks.net's Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week.

Skagos is generally placed on the atmospheric black metal shelf, but on Anarchic we find it definitely on the far end of that shelf. The music is beyond black metal and post-black, being very progressive, or rather evolutive in its structure. At times, it definitely has some blast beats and raw guitar sound; but at other times we are visiting any genres but metal. Vocals in general vary between the thin death metal screams of Cynic and the clean post-black vocals of early Ulver - yet it incorporates a variety of choirs, clean singing, and a somewhat colourful palette of other techniques.

Released in different formats during the Winter, Anarchic was re-released by The Flenser on CD format in its full extended version. Previous to this album, Skagos has released another full length and a handful of EPs and Splits since 2007, including an excellent one with Panopticon. On Anarchic, the production is somewhat "cleaner": it has a lot more mid-hi and hi-ends, which gives it more definition, while retaining its characteristic mid-fi edge.

I can understand why there are different versions. Broken down into seven parts, Anarchic generally comes as a download into 2 or 3 blocks; these parts are more or less 'songs', but rather 'moments' knitted together into one long song.

In the beginning, it all starts with waves of chaotic but gentle guitar feedbacks and distant clean strings. Once the mood is set, it smoothly turns into a progressive intro where calm singing overlay some simple progressive guitars. ...Then, from the deep, gushes out the black metal.

This black metal borders post-black metal, or more closely what our southern neighbors have nicknamed "Cascadian black metal": it is fast, linear and repetitive, it incorporates some folk or acoustic guitar parts and can sometimes be simple in its execution, it is mostly mid-fi in its production, but very intense overall. At some point after the 12:30 bar, we can almost hear a Transylvanian Hunger reference, although we are on a totally different planet with Skagos. What I like about this band, and what differentiates it from other Cascadian black metal outfits, are the surprises that colour the music and bring us places we didn't expect, as natural as an invitation, and taking its time without forcing our hand.

The whole album flows with great ease. When the black metal part ends, like after a heavy Summer rain, we are left with clean or acoustic strings, a few atmospheric drops of electric guitars, scattered chants, and peaceful quietness. Comparisons could be drawn with Agalloch.

Back to the theme, the idea of anarchy is not innocent. On this release, anarchy speaks to chaos, the great Chaos that lies behind Creation. Depicting this relation, we have an image behind another on the cover; more specifically there is a picture of nature hidden behind Urizen, Blake's artistic reference to the divine Creator. It comes as no surprise that nature is also a recurrent theme used by folk and black metal, and part of this inspiration on the West Coast are the Cascades mountains, or Canadian Rockies beyond the Great White North border. The concept of Anarchic is rather powerful, and the music convinces us. The journey back to the origins of life itself is long, but Skagos is masterfully able to carry us along the way until we find it deep inside of us.

25-some minutes after it all started, when all drums and distortion fade out, we plunge deep into It, and we face It. An off-voice speaks to us, while speaking to itself: "It seems the World was born out of an injury; some great wound inflicted into something that was here before...". At this point we are all ears, as it continues deep down into its own reflections. When it dies, a trembling voice picks it up, singing strong, although fragile and plaintive at the same time, over an atmospheric background music. Beautiful as frailty, the solitary narrative thread moves the journey further.

From this point on, and for another long passage, we are no longer visiting the realms of black metal, not even post-black, and all tags become useless. We can feel the influences of British bands like Anathema, and the distant call of Pink Floyd. We are lost; but we are peaceful.

This first half of the album is followed by its journey back, equally beautiful and full of contrasts. Despite some lengths, Anarchic is one album that has to be experienced from start to finish, alone. It bears darkness and light at the same time, and has a perfect balance between chaos and serenity.

Skagos has this ability to transport us and to create waves of feelings. Their music is taking its time, and it doesn't bother with the concept of "songs". Their invitation is personal, and there is some form of sacred silence necessary to appreciate it fully. It has been a long time since I've experienced such an introspective album, one that plunges you deep into the core. For this I am in awe.

For fans of Panopticon, Ulver, Alda, and Agalloch.

http://theflenser.bandcamp.com/album/anarchic
http://theflenser.com/

White Lake Mountain - Demo (demo)

WHITE LAKE MOUNTAIN - Demo
2013
Indie

Some time ago, I reviewed a band called The Unavowed, from Ottawa. They had released one epic EP called War, that offered the best of heavy, stoner, and crust altogether. When I heard that two of the band members were now in another band called White Lake Mountain, from the same area, I was very curious to hear what it would sound like.

Earlier this Spring, White Lake Mountain posted a four-tracks demo online. This project not only demonstrates that the ex-Unavowed are still rocking hard, but also that there's a new solid stoner rock entity in the National Capital. Along with Chris Mesner on drums and Nick Toone on bass, the band introduces the excellent Joe Hammond and H. Figurine on guitars. Vocal duties are shared by Toone and Hammond, in a heavy rockers style.

Apparently a home recording, this demo has nothing particular about its production. Call it raw, crust, or garage, it's not important when it comes to a demo, as long as it rocks - and this is exactly what this demo does. The four songs display a certain stylistic range, from dirty rock ("Cataclysmic Skies") to stoner doom ("Behemoth"), with equal ease at both ends. On the musicianship level, the two guitars approach is worthy of mention, for example on "When the Sleeper Wakes" (a song that reminds me of Mortification's song "Influence", in a good way).

This demo's song titles tell me something epic is coming our way - let's hope White Lake Mountain doesn't stop there.

www.whitelakemountain.com
https://soundcloud.com/#wlmband