Artist: Goremantle
Title: I Am The Nothingness
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Clan Destine Records
This album actually came out in November of last year, a little too long ago for my review parameters but as it only this month became available on cassette in the UK via Clan Destine I’ve stretched a little point because, well, I think it is well worth consideration. I guess I’ve also stretched a point as to its suitability for my ds/ambient corner but again somehow it just seems a better fit here.
Goremantle are a mysterious entity from Australia and I am genuinely unsure how this crossed my path. Probably fell from the claws of some intruding wretched creature.
The opening few moments, the title track, are just wonderful, sombre dungeon synth. A slightly echoing sound, slow keyboards, an immediate sense of foreboding. Its that lovely setting of scene and atmosphere that wraps about you. ‘Basilisks’ brings percussion and guitar at the crossroads of drone, funeral doom and black metal that Nortt has, the vocals almost lost in the background but the atmosphere somehow still cleaves to a more dungeon synth aesthetic.
Somehow this is still a storyteller at work.
‘Basilisks’ leave behind a ‘Fallen Paladin’ which though holding the drums still is a sparse, sound until the black metal vocals snarl and snap from the depths. ‘Hills Of Bergen’ offer a bleak stillness before ‘Martyrs’ descends back into the ponderous funereal pace with vocals almost below perception and ‘Galgenbreck’ drifts from delicate dungeons synth to a harsh vocal swarm.
‘Farm State’, a curious title that stands apart somehow, is a sparse but lengthy passage of slow harp like sounds and a dark drone, distant vocals and a little percussion rising eventually before fading away. ‘Esoteric Heretic’ winds up the unknown and the sense of wrongness. ‘Pantheon Exodus’ a somehow feels like the only passage that might be called a traditional song, though a strange and doom, drone one. ‘The Whispers’ bring a curious sense of light and delicacy to this intriguing album, an almost neo-folk feel to end upon.
It is an odd album to be sure. It feels like a dungeon synth album but aside from the depressive black metal aspects there is a soundscape here that that drifts through the funeral doom, the post-black metal and the drone too and yet somehow it just feels like dungeon synth at its base feeling its way into other corners.
It is an intriguing mix to be sure, but most importantly it is an absorbing dark journey that brings together all the influences seamlessly. Well worth anyone’s investigation.
Gizmo
https://goremantle.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-the-nothingness
https://clandestinerecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-the-nothingness
Walking The Liminal Space 