Artist: Dolorous
Title: Enraptured Despondent Bliss
Type: Album
Label: Digital / 913 Music
This just popped up out of nowhere for me I’m afraid so knowledge is zero beyond it is one of a few projects from Veil and this is one of her solo projects. Yes the cover grabbed me as was the description that this is raw black metal. I wanted to see if they could possibly connect under that cover painting.
Yeah, well they ain’t wrong but, wow this is just…strange. Captivating, ethereal melody and clean vocals drifting around a relentless primitive black metal sound and the fantastic buried screeching vocals. The drum sound on the opener ‘Dosifea’ strikes me as intially, to be polite, different. A lot of people will absolutely hate it, even some fans of raw black metal but it weirdly works its magic on me and proves me wrong. Some of the melody seems to drift into post-black metal, then ends with a choral passage but somehow it remains utterly fixed in raw bm because the noise, the riffing and vocals are utterly rampant.
The classical feel is deep and strong throughout the album. Sometimes there is the feeling that these two layers are simply present side by side with no connection but this is wrong. Inevitably they flow towards each other, mingling and melding until one really could not exist without the other. The tempo changes are well worht noting two. Despite the immovable velocity of the black metal there is variety and swerves and they are superbly placed.
‘Thread The Needle’ begins with a kind of…well… conversation vocal, the music slow and languorous before the animal rises and savages the whole. When it is more placid there are textures once more of that post-black or blackgaze style but it never allows the raw sound to be removed from front and centre for long and this works to keep me completely enthralled. I’m not sure I’ve found the concept of a sound quite as bewildering since Ebony Lake’s ‘Eve Of The Grimly Invented’ for those with more years on this planet than… well lots. 1999 to be clear. Or some of the bizarre stuff that lurched out and promptly vanished in the early 90s.The black metal has a sparse, lo-fi sound – I’m plucking at names helplessly here but Ildjarn and that slightly punk sound with a dose of Black Cilice in the intensity.
Oh I don’t know but I just love artists doing what they want with no concerns for ‘is it cool’ (it is by the way. It’s cool as fuck) and something weird and wonderful and involving come out. If you want a gaming analogy it’s like The Dancer Of The Boreal Valley in Dark Souls 3; this horrific, violent being still full of flowing grace and almost leisurely beauty
Shame the tapes have sold out. Ah well, late to the feast. I think I should take a look at Veil’s other projects too.
Give it a go people. I think many will be surprised. It’s quite something.
Gizmo
https://913group.bandcamp.com/album/enraptured-despondent-bliss
Walking The Liminal Space 