Artist: Glaive Wielder / Altar Of Moss
Title: Battlements
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Nocturnal Curse
Here’s a split I pre-ordered as not just liking both projects I was very intrigued as to how they might meld together on a split. And the answer is very well. Very nice packaging too I might add and great art by Howard Pyle. A pondering on the unglaorous side of battle they say, the things the man putting down the shilling on the drum head never speaks of but soon ushers in….
Side A is Glaive Wielder, and the opener ‘To Arm And Mobilize’ is a short, strangely grey and downbeat passage, a haze of lo-fi sounds enriching the fear and the dread that suddenly opens up as you pass the point of no return and reality begins to set in. ‘To Ponder On The Eve Of Combat’ has a few sounds around, the last minute hammerings or nails, sharpening or digging in and the synths are so grim so pensive. There is no talk. There are those last minute thoughts, the wondering of ‘what if’ that open and are swallowed by the dark cloud of war which they cannot avoid any longer. A half buried melody comes in, feeling like a gentle, resigned acceptance to me. This is the choice that was made on a bright sunny day, buoyed by ale and friends and tales. This darkness when sleep will not come and you can feel the mist, like the breath of war itself, drinking deep of the fear. A rich piece, utterly bereft of glory.
‘To Seige, Unrelenting’ begins with almost, very nearly, the feel of a slow fanfare, but a drone overtakes it and a bleak melody scythes through. There is strange, overwhelming grind to the opening, the same sound pushing , pushing until we get a beat. It swings the hammer slowly, little by little pounding here, resurging there when the cracks appear. There are no shouts of glory, of triumph, just the slow push, the pressure, the same motions over and over. The grim feel is terrible, somehow. It somehow reminds me of those predictable strikes, again and a gain but the mind realising how many faces slowly cease to be there, with you….simply gone. Somewhere. Sometime.
Altar Of Moss take up the chronicling now, ‘Victory At What Cost’ sets a low buzz, notes echoing through a place of death. The sound is full of a ghastly stillness as the cost is indeed counted. A mournful melody plays out, perhaps as face are recognised in the carnage, as friends and lovers stare up the their own small part of the toll paid amidst somewhere some lord or king gazes out across his victory. It is the melody that made me think of this, a counterpoint of the small to the overarching background beat and wash of synths. The parts that create the whole may be entirely different to those who owned those tiny parts, rather than the lofty vision from atop some hill.
And the we take ‘The Long Walk Home’. Epiuc drumbeats, the clash of cymbals, the call of the horns….yet a pall of darkness lays heavy upon it with some dark but rich synth sounds. The walk everyone wishes to take, to be able to take, and yet it carries its own soul weight. The military march of the drum pulls the memories and the horror in its wake. A pause, perhaps for thought. The realisation amongst the individuals that what awaits may not be what they left. The clouds they carry, the things they have seen and done. Those things necessary, and those perhaps that simply happened in the horror of it all. It is a superb track indeed.
This is a fine, fine work of old school dungeon synth with fusings of dark ambient. It tells the other tale of these great battles. The grim, bitter, horrifying cull, the destruction. The curse it casts over all who survive.
Truly excellent music indeed.
Gizmo
Battlements | Glaive Wielder/Altar of Moss | Glaive Wielder
Glaive Wielder/Altar Of Moss – Battlements | Nocturnal Curse Records
Walking The Liminal Space 