Artist: Illusive Key
Title: Consume Us
Type: Album
Label: Digital / CD / Vinyl
I’d initially kind of scrolled on past this album by this new, international band when it first popped up here and there. Not gonna lie, the cover image made it look like a kind of post-black metal vibe that at the time I couldn’t face. Reasons. But thankfully I am also inclined to go back and take a look at things and firstly noted that one of the trio (completed by CSQN and MK) was Déhà who I recently encountered doing some extraordinary vocals on the last Elffor album. Ironically here it is MK supplying those but sometimes little hooks are enough to pull you in.
So ‘Disseverance’ begins and straight away the sound here is clear and dark and atmospheric. Slow synths, a clear guitar line that evokes a place of memory, of things unfinished. And then in an absolute cold, furious blast the drums and a huge bellow bursts through the doors. The riff is huge, the guitar veers into a weird discordant sound and the feeling of hurtling down into some absolute pit of horrow is all around you. The vocals are strange; dark, raw and halfway between spoken bellowing and screams and… and I don’t know what. Its a sound I haven’t heard in so long. This is monomaniacal horror, an utter assault and it is absolutely bloody glorious. It hurts my head, makes it feel as though someone else’s thoughts are trapped in here with me and the atmosphere is rage and madness and something clawing its way out. It finds moments to slow, as though your assailant is pausing to gether strength before the beating continues, the drumming pounding hard as you can almost feel the muscles bunching…
I’m breathless. A little afraid. There’s three more tracks of this to go.
And no it doesn’t let up. ‘Ghosts’ weirdly for again reasons reminds me of M.R James as black metal; a torrent of fear streaming from a breach in this world. It takes a riff and rides it like a storm pinning back your flesh as the moments of guitar melody dig deep into flesh. There are flashes, ghosts even, of the frostbitten riff style of some Finnish bands and then the discordant sound collapses into a gravitational pull akin to Blut Aus Nord or The Axis Or Perdition and those screams and howls the sound of a soul being torn apart within it.
‘Yearning’ has those gentle guitar notes slowly submerged beneath a raw, distorted sound until only an odd discordance leaks out. The riff that takes hold is slow, malevolent and ponderous. The vocals intimdiating; slow and deliberate. Preaching almost, if the congregation was nailed to their pews. The repetion of the riff holds firm, once more leaving me feeling as though I am in the grip of some maelstrom dragging my down through lost caverns and distant hells. I have know idea what they yearn for but it cannot be anything good, not at all..
Finally we somehow reach ‘Consume Us’. The descending, winding riff style doesn’t wait this time. The guitar melody pirces sharply and the speed intensifies, the drumming which has been a monster throughout the album drives all before it with weight and almost animalistic intent. It spins on, ending in a dixxying, nausea inducing circle of guitar and void…
All the musicians here are long standing artists in the scene. Coming together though they have created a horror of wind tunnel intensity and brain rattling uncertainty and disorientating atmosphere. This is one of those deadpan, dark, plain wrong creations that does not come along often. As far as 2025 goes this is up there with Woebather for a consummate creation from a focussed intent.
Just this is wrong. You know it in moments. And yet you cannot look away.
Half an hour of horror. Glorious.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 