AArtist: Ghül
Title: Shadow Of Grief
Type: Album
Label: Digital
No stranger to Walking The Liminal Space, this new album by the always intriguing Ghül is a second album in a close space of time that uses Tolkein’s ‘The Children Of Hurin’ as its basis but both taking very different musical routes. Ghül always follow their own path of course, and this one is very, very much the road of black metal. And as I explained before in the Grimdor review, I have not read the tale so this is all my personal impressions, but if it’s any consolation Abghül has persuaded me to buy a copy at long last!
‘In The Shadow Of My Thoughts’ opens the album. Slow and very dark synths breathe a sense of genuine apprehension, almost horror into the proceedings. Darkest of ambient, the hiss rising until the howl of black metal breaks out. A chilling melody atop the fantastic vocals and riff. Drums gallop and the ride is on. This is like the sound of memories haunting you; a bitter and chaotic turmoil of thought and action and defiance and utter regret clambering over each other. If you have never heard Ghül before this is a perfect place to start; it is uncompromising, wild and darkly intelligent. It takes you deep into the mind of another and the driving darkness that dwells within. Relentless and a grip like tendons of steel, it is nine minutes of superb black metal.
‘Dread Helm’ allows no let up. The sound turns icy, windswept. There is a sense of being trapped here, somehow. As though you have awakened in some prison and the voices inside both mock you and coax you into some terrible action. More direct that the opener, more harsh: It grinds you down, crushes you and slowly, surely, your will may no longer be your own.
‘Blood Stained, Son Of Ill Fate’ feels like a ride through battles has opened up before me. Fast with furious riffing there is also a sense of bleakness in the grey, bitter melodic strains that are the spine. There is also little of the sinuous to it unlike the previous two tracks. This seems unwavering, focussed, the riff driving down and down along the chosen path…. and then the most curious of synth sound rise up through the riff. Like a heart monitor, a strangely unsettling bleep, bleep, bleep…. a softening to the drive forward. It is weird and very, very affecting. A synth melody rolls over the top, gradually consuming all the fire and the blood as though smothering the very life from you…A last surge, a girding of loins and maniacal intent and then all falls away. Death? Perhaps. A closure. All that was done, all the defiance fades…
‘The Coming Of The Great Worm’ is an epic of ten minutes, a gradual feeling of something coming in the waves of riff and of howl. And then the bleak emptiness that settles on the land. It reeks of broken land, deserted buildings somehow. Just a grey blanket of death. The most desolate track on the album.
‘Silence Will Serve All Out Ends’ is the final chapter. A wary opening, ariff that seems to spend ia time stalking before the keening melodic guitar and riff surges in. It has that almost Sargeist edge to it, the way the melody can cut straight to the heart with its feel and yet the power of the song never wavers balanced on the edge between almost folk and total black metal as it is. There is a sadness to this one, or a melancholy at least. Deeds done perhaps, secrets buried and the knowledge that there is no going back. Absolutely superb end to a great, great album.
I kind of dread reading the book now, in a small way. The album is such consummate storytelling but without me having a foundation of knowledge, how far has my imagination taken me from the story? And then I tell myself that doesn’t matter; the fact that the music inspired these flights of fantasy and the wellsprings of emotion and unrelenting tragedy should tell you all you need to know about how successful this is. Ghül continue to impress with their unpredictable approach constantly shifting between ambient inclinations and raw black metal fire but their desire to tell a tale is the dark, intelligent glistening at its heart.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 