Artist: Misery
Title: Beneath The Black Sigil Of Nocturnal Sovereignty
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Serpent’s Sword Records
I am only a little acquainted with Serpent’s Sword as a label and Misery, I am assuming, are either debuting as a project with this or are simply one of those names previously unknown to me. And just to add; it is said that this was recorded direct to tape under a full moon, buried beneath a yew in a cemetery and dug up and recorded directly without editing. That being taken as precise, this is an even more extraordinary recording than you might assume on first listening.
Yeah, this is something.
‘In The Eve Of Death’s Twilight’ stutters into undeath, gathering flickers between channels as its deeply, crushingly lonely atmosphere spreads out like the plague with a strange, low level interference haunting the background constantly. Something which came out of its grave with it, perhaps. Funereal in pace, dusty as a tombe and with a soft miasma around each note as though the barren earth still clings to it. It is frankly beautiful. Funeral doom as the darkest dungeon synth for the perfect gothic soundtrack to a long cursed, forgotten Italian horror. Do we walk hand in hand with the spectre, or stand, unable to move, as the benighted graveyard whispers with souls not yet ready to move on…
The ‘Dreaded Illusions Of The First Dawn’ follow. It has a melody that flows, almost dances over the dirge, hallowed organ-like promising something better, something to be worshipped perhaps but as you move to it, the melody falls into the darker depths nd leaves you alone as the wolves howl.
‘Invoking The Funeral Light Of Satan’s Pallid Sword’ has the imperious feel to the synths as a strange darker sound rises behind it. It feels like a gathering of clouds yet underground. Ominous, but of a slow grace you cannot help but feel as though this is something that you must welcome. A held moment as it is revealed, and then the darkness closes about the bearer of light and yourself. For a while all else simply ceases with existence.
‘Purifying Hall Of Mirrors’ vibrates with dense background hiss and interference but the music moulds it beautifully into the framing. I become lost somewhere in this hall, but there are no reflections only dark voids staring back at me where I should stand. Strangely, disturbingly disorientating. The ‘Howling Inquisition’, the voice of a wolf, pulls me back. Pulsing organ sound like the pressure of blood at your temples makes the world seem as though it is all wavering and yet the melody stays strong and true. It stares into you demanding answers that you do not have…
‘Scriptures Of The Void’ has an almost heraldic sound, the imperial sound of the approach but maybe not of the physical. This is the approach of knowledge, that feeling that opening the words and allowing their contact to flow over you has. An awakening in the space their slow seeping creates within you. It is the sound of a moment for yourself only, for your eyes to see those strange darklight motes that are utterly unknowable but so enticing.
‘Soul Extraction (The Dark Art Of Sacred Umbral Necromancy)’ is the last ritual of this journey. The sound is more and more of the grave. Dense, cloying and implacable; everything to this point has been of some volition but here there is none. This is what should never be and yet is. A slow, long moment of blasphemy. An act of undoing the order of things that itself cannot be undone.
And softly it is done.
Misery. Oh this is a well named project, but also the sound and the motion and the choice of melody are so beautiful and dark and of dust, tombs and earth. Atmospheric is too hard edged a world to encompass it; this is thick, dark, soft drapes that smell of earth and cobwebs and something…wrong.
Old school in the most particular and finest of ways, this is just essential for me. I do hope it gets a physical release even if its simply so I can let it rest in soil for a while longer.
Gizmo
Beneath the Black Sigil of Nocturnal Sovereignty | Misery | Serpent’s Sword
Walking The Liminal Space 