Artist: Dzat
Title: Essence Of nothingness
Type: Album
Label: Digital /Svart Hat (forthcoming) / Blackmass Records (forthcoming)
Once more I find myself in the place where I am unsure if I hear things that are not there, or if others can hear what I hear in music. Dzat is it seems a one person (‘Empty’) project from Indonesia, second one from that country that has grabbed my attention in recent months. And this is that borderland between raw black metal and noise.
‘Death’ is a blur and buzz of keyboards and utterly bleak black and white noise. Rattles rise and fall, waves of noise perculate. Nothing moves. This place is dead. ‘Void’ then simply howls. There is a weird melody to the riff, think Finland, that eerie tone and vocals buried in the mists like Black Cilice. It is monomaniacal stuff; eyes locked, head down raw black metal but with a huge atmosphere curling around its void. ‘Anguishness’ has a dark tune to the fuzzed and distorted guitars. It dips and surges through a dark passage with a sinuous insistence. The firs time the tempo shifts, the song holding its momentum we hear almost moaned, almost clean vocals hinted at. It becomes deeply eerie from then on. This is not just noise; it has something deeply held emerging into this music. ‘Pain’ once again has the template; the distorted blanket of noise and the almost subliminal vocals but the the tune strident and moving with ease through this dense fog of a musical world.
‘Nightmare’ is a slower moment, ponderous and with a necklace of clean notes whispering through it. This is pure DSBM, incredibly atmospheric with echoes of the emergent Xasthur and similar but with a deeper grasp of melody that never strips away the buzzing, hissing backdrop. It finds its momentum too, speeding up to tip over the edge.
‘Ruined’ on the other hand is an ugly sound; a jagged guitar edge almost industrial in tone as keyboards moan and howl around it like ghosts. Short, sharp, dark.
‘End’. Finality. Organ sounds and perhaps distant thunder or the collapse of some building. An almost sweet melody plays regardless. The juxtaposition is weird, unsettling. It should attract me, this tune, but instead it repels me. Something is off kilter about this scenes, as though it goes on regardless.
I have no idea who Empty is, what drives Dzat except for the words on their Bandcamp page. But this, out of nowhere, is another fascinating and compelling work for anyone who likes the deeper places that raw black metal coalesces in. It is at times horrific, bleak, empty and enticing. It, for me, is an exceptionally fine bit of raw, atmospheric DSBM.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 