Seremonia - Kristalliarkki [2015]

It sometimes happens that a band on such a creative spree suddenly starts to slow down for unknown reasons, closing up their inventive faculties for a safer approach. That aside, Finland has always stood for me as a creative bastion of heavy metal, rearing an expanse of cultural marvels and oddities with frequent use of their native tongue even on records which distinctly appeal to the Westernized culture, and therefore I count myself lucky to have witnessed sundry acts like Seremonia which exemplify the kind of diverse metal tradition I talked about. Finland is an endless pool of awesome, whether your tastes lie in their murky, archaic old school death metal milieu spearheaded by bands such as Convulse, Demigod or Purtenance or the relatively more recent black metal of Horna, Sargeist and Beherit, each conjuring their unique tapestry of grimness, and Seremonia belongs to an arguably more 'hippy-centric' circle among these. Their album ''Ihminen'' was one of 2013's highlights, so I was naturally elated to find they'd released a fresh disc: coming back to what I said at the beginning of the paragraph, it's somewhat disappointing to hear that the Finns didn't exactly explode with the same bonafide panoply of ritualistic Black Sabbath psychedelia as before...

...but even though they've sacrificed some of their creativity I'd say ''Kristalliarkki'' (crystal sheet if Google translate is to be trusted) kicks ass, to say the least. For newcomers, this is a great surprise of 70's doom/rock with psychedelic influences from the same era, and the Sabbath influence obviously weighs heavily here, but there are also bits and pieces that reek of stoned Finnish mysticism and queer folk textures anointed with queer and jumpy keyboard sequences that sound quite unlike anything I've heard, except its predecessor. So you can be sure that the Finns don't dip every single riff, pattern or oomph-laden sound effect into the Black Sabbath sink, since every crevice of those morose 70's doom/stoner progressions are filtered with at least a minimal dose of 'cemetery hippy' elements, which is a term that the band uses define itself, not an inaccurate one at that. If anything, I've found the dazed 70's keyboards here more prominent than on the debut, and assuredly they have a killer handful of keyboard solos at their disposal, and perhaps than just the sheer abundance of keyboard and gummy synthesizer sequences I loved that individually they channel different emotions, ranging from the atmospheric dolor of ''Jokainen Askel'' to something jumpier.

The guitars are meatier, too, which could be a positive development depending on your point of view. They've evolved slightly from these metallic, almost tinny stoner/doom tones to something considerably fuzzier. The Finns still manage to bring a surprising variety and sparse palette of riffing on the table, be it a rambunctious twist of bluesy notes or a heavier chord, they all hit their stride. There might be a few brief windows of time where I was more fond of the overall aural presentation of the wet, cannabis-dosed graveyard than the actual riffs when one or two of them were sounding alike, but overall they sink in quite well with my ears, and in fact get tastier with each spin. Noora's vocals are just as great: I've never seen female vocalists as a caveat to heavy metal, and she's exceptionally unique with her folksy, but strangely sober voice, tailoring both the ritualistic odor of the album, and to be honest, with backing vocals, there are few parts on the album where she nearly sounds like a j-pop singer. ''Kristalliarkki'' is not all hippy metal fun time, though, which is why it's so appealing. Like ''Ihminen'', there's a dark Nordic phantasm which rules over the fuzz of the guitars, the atmosphere never quite leers out of its menacing disposition, and just about any part of the album is fit for the commencement of some cankered ritual ceremony, wearing robes and doused in dope smoke, demonstrating that the seeping influence of Black Sabbath can take twisted, unexpected forms with time.

Seremonia doesn't take many cues from post-Sabbath bands like Saint Vitus, Candlemass or Paul Chain, although anyone with genuine interest in doom or even newer doom/sludge bands promulgated so frequently by mainstream magazines and record labels which I usually tend to dislike can find something interesting here, and there are even visible distinctions between the gloomy psychedelia the Finns propagate and the more sodden sound of modern stoner/doom bands such as Conan or Solstice. A major improvement over the debut might be the abridged lengths of the songs, as the whole album is overall shorter than its predecessor. Seremonia is probably one of the most unique voices in doom metal you'll hear today. They might have cut down on some of the fundamental weirdness of their debut, and while I'd still prefer it to this album, they've managed to up their consistency with shorter tracks, balanced compositions and professional finesse, with the exception of the quirky and trippy ''Kristalliarkki I'' with its uncanny jazz leads and flute murmurs, as though a folksy anomaly out of an album by the Finns' psychedelic black metal countrymen Oranssi Pazuzu, full of enticing and murky drowsiness. I'm not going to go on and say ''Kristalliarkki'' is perfect, because it isn't. A good 15-20% of the album could have used better penning or a few escapist digressions to keep the listener in continual trance, but by the end of the record, between your lazy ass seated as you read this review and the myriad tombstones smeared with moss and half-burnt sheaves of cannabis, how many good doom metal bands exist to which you'd pay lip service to? That's what I thought. So without further ado, acquire this, and stop bitching about the Finnish lyrics.

Highlights:
Alfa ja Omega
Musta Liekki
Jokainen Askel

Rating: 80%

A Forest of Stars - Beware the Sword You Cannot See [2015]

Lately there's been an ongoing fetish in the black market concerning the dissection and integration of elements derived from 70's psychedelic rock bands, and to be honest, while this does not sound like a favorable coitus of genres at first, a trend which has engendered bands like Hail Spirit Noir and Oranssi Pazuzu can be hardly be chastised for lacking proficiency or being unambitious. Of course, the marriage of 70's psychedelia with black metal does require eccentricities of sorts, which is why even though we dub then as psychedelic black metal, each of these bands, as well as England's A Forest of Stars more or less enjoy a uniqueness under their own roof. A Forest of Stars' fourth offering ''Beware the Sword You Cannot See'' hits all the sweet spots for an eclectic heavy metal listener, a steampunk aficionado, a Victorian gentlemen, a comic Dickensian figure straight out of Bleak House, and a spiritualistic preacher of sorts, since it's likely to be one of the weirdest yet absorbingly idiosyncratic releases I've heard this year along with Solefald's ''World Music'', chock full of kooky inventiveness and immersive musical talent.

If you don't believe me, just have a look at the pseudonyms: one Titus Longbutter or T.S. Kettleburner certainly feels redolent of a Dickens novel, the bizarre parade of folk, autumnal psychedelia and gloomy black metal impressionism doesn't even begin there. From it's melancholy opener ''Drawing Down the Rain'' the band seems to be on the verge of a progressive black metal phantom in the mode of Enslaved with fairly simplistic melodies, but they immediately fill up the empty spaces with folksy flutes which beckons a far more pagan taste, say, similar to one Kroda, Drudkh or Arkona; but I love the fact that the group can shift through their own 7+ minute songs like quicksand, evolving once again into a hazily progressive riff and then into a meteor shower of unfrazed tremolos headed by melodic psychedelia. These Victorians are unhinged but it doesn't stop the music from evocatively drawing up imagery and queer, almost Gothic constellations and fragmentary journeys across the firmament. The opener is by far the most 'atmospheric' advent in the entire album, fostered by somber chords and almost minimalistic melody patterns, but the following two songs, ''Hive Mindless'' and ''A Blaze of Hammers'' are just as consuming pieces, and the group, thankfully does not omit a few pauses in between the marathons by adding a few stringy chords and clean guitar sequences glazed with nearly defunct violins and keyboard scores. They do take some time to get to the point, true, and not everything (especially in the first half of the album) is bound to grab you by your neck and slam you to the ground and leave you agog with sensation, but the material presented is celestial and beautiful to say the least.

Of course it would be a capital offense to exclude the vocalist Mister Curse who practically spearheads the benignly confusing effusion of sounds with his remarkable voice. We're not even talking regular singing here: he feels more as though he's reciting poetry in a remarkably 'English' manner, exquisite oratory that reminds me of Bal-Sagoth and their fantastical vocal shenanigans with similarly cosmic subjects in mind. Katheryne, Queen of Ghosts also handles female vocals here, a soothing and rich fairy-metal vox not unlike Nightwish or the operatic female vocals in Therion's later outings, but what I truly enjoy is that they supplement the harsher, brazen discourse of the male vocals with a maudlin alternative. Mister Curse, of course, engages in a more unruly inflection from time to time to complement fuzzier discharges of fairly straightforward Scandinavian tremolo work, like a well-attuned Victorian gentleman suddenly devolving into beast-mode. The second half of the album, which I probably enjoyed more than the first, is split into numerical parts. Not only are all the songs shorter in this half but they flow in and out of each other like a lengthy piece diced into smaller fragments: ''Part I: Mindslide'' begins with a moving vocal solo by Katheryne, and then into morphs into a haunting, hypnotic orgy of buzzing synthesizers redolent of John Carpenter's solo compositions and horror scores with ''Have You Got A Light, Boy?'', my favorite song on the entire album, which unfolds entirely with the words and there WAS light! before ''Perdurabo'', with its equally Gothic and alienating synthesizer swell, begins. But keep in mind that no single instrument truly steals the show here, ever. While the violins or singular keyboards may be to the fore on some of the rainier moments on the album, and the lapsing, flickering psychedelic guitar riffs during some other sequences, it's a surprisingly healthy balance of a canopy of instruments and endeavors in a rather 'unhealthy' album which makes it such a pleasure to listen to ,without anything running dry.

The sheer scope and autumnal drapery offered by ''Beware the Sword You Cannot See'' is enormous. Picturesque vistas and celestial serpents devouring their own tails. Imaginary soundscapes that could have easily fitted Mervyn Peake's masterpiece Gormenghast. The conceptual enigmas of the record, however, are just the cherry on top as far as the music goes, since this album is bound to be the new best thing for black metal, at least in my book. Not every moment is mesmerizing, and I really felt they could have trimmed the songs a little, - especially those in the first half - but the emotive, paranoid atmosphere offered, both lyrically and musically, is nothing short of delightful when it comes to the few outstanding tracks to be found, and certainly this is far more captivating tapestry of autumn leaves and starry auras than so many other 'atmospheric' black metal bands claim to possess. Instead of bludgeoning us to submission through tired, colorless monotone, these illustrious connoisseurs of the genre are inviting us into the celestial sphere and their mountable worms, alluring from a distance, beckoning with nocturnal beauty. Excellent.

Highlights:
A Blaze of Hammers
Virtus Sola Invicta

Have You Got A Light, Boy?
An Automaton Adrift

Rating: 87%

Hail Spirit Noir - Oi Magoi [2014]

Nocturnal glazes. Witches chanting out by barren vistas of frozen mountains. Hordes of demons. Spitting on the crucifix. Clandestine altars and masochistic rituals in underground compartments. These are, broadly speaking, the majority of the images conjured by the majority of the today's black metal bands. To some, the ceaseless blasphemy, the witch-haunts and the Satan-worshiping is not a problem. In fact, many avid listeners still enjoy them. Looking at this with a different perspective, though, one might easily notice that the cliches are getting more and more redundant, an ever-meandering series of garden variety bands popping up as if in columns, sneering with the corpse-paint firmly attached to their face. I mean, come on. How long has it been since Possessed released their debut? Forget Possessed; it's been twenty years since the first genre-defining masterpieces were released by means of the Scandinavian grandfathers. There are still a handful of bands that can embrace the atmospheric platitude with a certain degree of quality at their hands, throwing in a fairly original bunch of pastiches, but beyond sundry goods, the number of bands who are really, I mean really stepping up the game for black metal are limited. That said, Greece supported some pretty cool bands in the past. Outside of having cathartic groups like Septic Flesh that coagulated in the 90's and continue to expand on their sound today, Greece housed Necromantia, Rotting Christ, and a few others that really helped define the traditional Greek black metal sound.

So, what makes Hail Spirit Noir unique is that they're not only defiant against the promulgation of their countrymen but also against pretty much any other band that existed and continues to exist in the scene. Perhaps what makes me like these guys the most is their handling of black metal as if it were an entirely different genre, with little regard whatsoever about the advancements of their contemporaries and their ancestors. Hail Spirit Noir sparked up attentions with the unwarranted advent of their debut ''Pneuma'', which caused something of a minor explosion in the underground, but they were pretty much idle for the remainder of 2012 and 2013, as if waiting to pounce of a host of unsuspecting listeners with the meticulous conducts of their obviously higher-caliber sophomore ''Oi Magoi'', which is easily one of the best records of 2014, even if the year has only spanned little over a month by now. The debut featured much potential, but I still thought it was impeded by a certain adherence to traditional sounds which ultimately begat an album that was good, but it still had its dull moments. ''Oi Magoi'' waists no time getting to the fucking point which ''Pneuma'' was somewhat shy to jump onto. It's almost as though after two years' salvage of influences, and an even more laborious plotting of compositions and waiting, the Greeks just capitulated to the vastness of their inventiveness, letting loose and giving not a single fuck about it.

What makes ''Oi Magoi'' so original? Nearly all its aspects, I daresay. To be honest I was somewhat filled with trepidation before entering the record, and much of that curious resentfulness pervaded my first spin. Though I unquestionably enjoyed and accepted the sheer imagination and musical proficiency of the Greeks, I found the songs a tad too lengthy for my taste. Then, came the second, third and fourth listens, and all my wild wonder and astonishment that preceded them. In truth, the base formula that they're using is not too complicated for any modern connoisseur of black metal; a great, even somehow lively ship, mooring the expanses and palettes of 70's psychedelia, prog rock and, of course, black metal; but the funny fact is that the most apparent aspect of black metal on this record is Theoharis' manic, septic vocal deliveries, which are more sneering and crisp than a regular, Ihsahn-esque timbre, and not the grainy, lightweight guitar tone. That aside, ''Oi Magoi'' merely plays according to all these genres and sub-genres. The spectrum of instruments and implementations is at such a startlingly wide range that the Greeks are enviably bordering a new sub-genre; the closest thing to ''Oi Magoi'' out of the entirety of metal's catalog are the Fins Oranssi Pazuzu and their beautifully indulgent mix of psychedelia and oozing black metal. ''Oi Magoi'' is still different because there's less of a sense of languor and a more folksy, acute sound that succeeds mostly because of the brazen incorporation of copious sounds that should be alien to most listeners.

We're talking organs straight out of the 70's and 60's, wheezing medleys of psychedelic rock, flutes, and who knows what other oddities, stretched against a tableau of vile but energetic, tempered black/thrash chord progressions. Sure, there are a few moments in the rich 49 minutes of run-time that hold appeal as straightforward, relatively atmospheric chord formations, like the excellent chorus of ''Hunters'', but these moments are scarce; this is a band who's much less in the favor of plus-10 minutes of droning, cascading chords encapsulations, like much of today's atmospheric black metal market (think Agalloch, Austere, Midnight Odyssey, etc.), and more keen to push the listener right into a cliff of their incredible, imaginative vistas. ''The Mermaid'' is the perfect example to this, laden with everything from piano-infused guitar chugs to synthesizers and traditional sounds unknown to me. It is perhaps a tad too long, but so full of riches and poignant moments that one is instantly swayed to an almost unfaltering heaven of hazy, riff-loaded psychedelia, strident bass lines flowing like butter through the unreal orchestral escapades. ''Demon For A Day'' is even better, being the one of the ''hit-songs'' of the record along with ''Blood Guru'' and ''Hunters'', but even more phenomenal is ''Satan Is Time'', which comes with a somewhat unorthodox song structure, but luring all my attention with its magical gamut of funereal tension and a slew of excellent guitar work, not to mention some of the most enduring lyrics I've heard in a good while:

We float in space and follow the pace
of a clock designed by His Will
Satan shall reap what God has sown
Blackness comes, colors go

You run, you hide but Satan can find the cowards
that live by His side
The needle rotates, a lie it creates,
but then it stands still and kills
If heaven is here, it will stay here
Hell is a place full of clocks

Satan is time
Ο διάβολος είναι ο χρόνος
Ο χρόνος είναι ο διάβολος

Hail Spirit Noir strikes win, win and win on ''Oi Magoi''. I could go on and laud this record for paragraphs upon paragraphs, but I'll try to keep it short. This is a record which is consistent as well as unexpected, unprecedented - a rare mixture to have in our modern day. A profound admiration and understanding of their own folk-induced sound, and a prevailing sense of originality makes this album a real gem, and one that simply can't be disparaged within a decade, let alone a few years from now. True, like nearly all albums, it has its flaws, some minute weaknesses such as the slightly overextended duration and the the lack of memorability in some of the more basic progressions - where there were so many great and catchy sequences - but that doesn't mean ''Oi Magoi'' isn't terrific, far from it. But there are so few bands in the current scene capable of living up to such a level of imagination and masterful musical blending as these guys that I may as well say it shines just about all the way through. It's just a few slivers away from perfection, something that the band will wrap up effortlessly in their following masterwork, I hope, whatever that may be.

Highlights:
Hunters
Oi Magoi
Satan Is Time
Demon For A Day

Rating: 93%