Artist: Flüstern der Nacht
Title: Kropija
Type: EP
Label: Digital
Well this is another one of those things which flapped its way to the Liminal Space anonymously (and Bandcamp says Romania…) that I really found a little different and kind of straddles that bordeline between the rawest black metal and dark dungeon noise.
‘Esoteric Darkness’ begins with a howl and an incredibly raw sound. The drums echo and the guitar sound disintegrates around the edges as though the recording was buried in its homeland soil for a long, long time. It has a real…live feel as well as just that approach as though they simply followed their rage. The structure is loose which gives it that tattered rags, howling obscenity feel like some revenant clawing its way out of the dungeon anyway it can but with a sense of purpose even if that purpose is primitive.. would I describe it as a song? Perhaps not. This is raw black metal noise stripped to bloodied bones and released unguided and yet somehow it is not shapeless; it may be laying the structure almost as it goes but it moves as a piece. It has a tension that builds belying the spontaneous feel…
‘Whispering Night ‘ (I think that is the translation of Flüstern der Nacht…) is if anything even more chaotic. It batters and thrashes at the shutters reminding me of a Thomas De Quincy quote: She carries no key; for though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted entry at all…It has a sense of the outside, outside of all rationality, trying to come in. Cold, elementary and of pure fury and you can only hope it passes finding no ingress
‘Vampir’ is powered by the drums and the howls, a distant discordant and insanely meandering guitar…melody?… deep in the background as though a lost soul wandering in its own mind as the horrors around it burn everything down. Yet I find it worryingly compelling.
This little box of horrors closes with the ‘Tragedy Of Immortality’. It feels like a wind tunnel where the flailing shreds of tooth and claw rip past you on an unstoppable descent. Unwavering, unapologetic, utter noise it is a suitably harsh and difficult end to a genuine curiosity.
This most definitely won’t be for everyone at all. I have since first beginning to understand ‘music’ like Merzbow, Massonna or an early encounter with C.C.C.C. had a small part of my mind slowly open to the experimental noise end of the spectrum. As far as black metal goes this is the closest I have heard to something like the Rougarou album I reviewed a while ago. I am sure some will think it nothing more than a racket, and see nothing but pretentious twaddle in my words. Well the latter is probably true of me but my twaddle is always my truth; music in all its forms should make emotion and image blossom or explode in your mind and this does just that.
Bolt the shutters, caulk the cracks and let this rage. You never know where it might take you.
Gizmo
