Artist: Gölgaräh
Title: To Weave The Empyrean Chains Of Night
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Hammer & Flail Records
I like to drop in on Hammer & Flail regularly as their approach as a label tends towards the slightly different. Raw, often slightly punk inflected black metal, dungeon synth… whatever takes their fancy I suppose and actually a little way back one of my gateways into the labyrinthian realms of the underground.
Gölgaräh were unknown to me despite having Wyrm of Erythrite Throne (amongst so many others) as half the duo with Mort’loch (of a similar dizzying number of projects). So I hoped for quality but beyond that? Not a clue, not even from the excellent cover art.
‘Fallen Paradise’ is a pulsing bit of dungeon synth, a scene setter of rising choral sounds and patient layering. Epic drums, that dip into minor chords (says the non-musician) to bring a melancholy swell to the proceedings. Its a rich lead in; confident andwith a steady majesty. It fades and ‘The Cold Touch Of Bastard Steel’ growls and crawls its way in. A raw, edgy guitar riff, echoing clean vocals, a slow and sombre pace. It’s a skeletal form of doom but as the soul in the vocals cries out, so effective. There is a real sense of loss and of torment in these vocals and the persistent riff and drums leave an image in my mind of a fate awaiting the warrior. It is frankly stripped back beauty.
‘Lucid Dreams Of The Sacrificial Altar’ begins with a lonely guitar, a very tradtional heavy metal sound made plaintive by its isolation. It fades totally, a pause and then apparently the same song arrives for a second time with a pounding and a snarl, cry and howl of some deranged entity or victim. They seem somehow almost divorced from the black metal guitar and drums in their separated drive, almost, but they swerve together here and there and it is a strange, short, twisted dance.
‘As The Second Mouth Of The Hydra Tears Flesh From Bone’ has strange clean vocals wavering and almost wailing or crying around another riff that dips doom into a blackened pit. It is a weirdly unsettling sound. The monomaniacal riff, the unsettling vocals; a strange journey indeed. ‘Devotion To The Stygian Ring’ in contrast is a gorgeous, glistening slice of black metal; haunted, feral and deliberate in pace. ‘Fractured Soul Of The Sin Eater’ is similarly a pure raw black metal sound but with a more determined pace; stripped back still with the guitar and drums and vocals but excellent if you like the style (and I do, very much.) ‘To Bask In The Immortal Flames Of The Afterlife’ is more of the blackened doom sound twisting and moving through black metal riffs. The effect is quite beautiful; strange clean vocals almost murmuring around the slow cascade of the riff and creating a sense of being trapped, heightened by the death vocals snapping and snarling around them. It’s absolutely superb. Absolutely.
‘A Funeral Hymn For Mother Time’ closes this strange but so impressive album. Another passage of music, dungeon synth in style. A horn sound takes the lead, synths moving around the slow and simple beat until all fades, a moment of quiet and the return is rich and full in its presence; organ and timpani added to that simple spine and a swell of keyboards to paint the world in funeral colours. A procession towards the altar, a journey at the end of all. It is a magnificent end.
Gölgaräh are not what I would call straightforward. They weave and combine doom, dungeon synth and skeletal black metal in unexpected and just wonderful ways. They create atmosphere with the sparsest of brushes and yet it envelopes and slices deep. It is so good to see such experimentation that still absolutely holds firm to its roots.
I am genuinely hooked.
Gizmo
https://hammerandflailrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/to-weave-the-empyrean-chains-of-night
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