First things first. If you buy this, by all means protect the clamshell casing with your LIFE! Black Horizons has packaged this in an extra-large oversized plastic clamshell that fits all three cassettes comfortably inside. Yeah, it looks really sharp, but the problem with this plastic housing is that if you break this case, you will NEVER find a replacement. We'll take great care to enshroud this boxset in plenty of packing material for all shipments outside these doors; but the fragility of such a plastic case speaks to the benefits of modular design (e.g. the standard jewel case and the standard clamshell).
That said, Black Horizons presents a ponderous collection of doom-laden electronics, crusty dirge-metal, and ash-smeared drones all done as musical arrangements for the films of Ingmar Bergman, with contributions from Persistence In Mourning, Fear Konstruktor, Swamp Horse, Terence Hannum, Ryan Unks, and King Dude. Persistence In Mourning opens proceedings with a creaky, crusty neo-folk passage whose waltzing melodies across acoustic instruments lashes plenty of scabrous scrapes across the violins that's much more Alastair Galbraith than Tony Wakeford, before the outfit settles into a lo-fi apocalyptic doom dirge laced with piano and compressed feedback. The Russian dark ambient outfit Fear Konstruktor follows the snaking shadows that Cranioclast proposed as the cryptic soundtracks to private rituals. Josh Lay is one of the characters creating the blackened minimalism and wild-eyed stasis for Swamp Horse, very much akin to the recent KTL recordings. Locrian's cofounder Terence Hannum takes up the flip of this cassette with two slow-burning black ambient crescendos rising out of elegiac melodies and thickened downtuned walls of crumbled distortion. Ryan Unks, formerly of the grindcore band Creation Is Crucifixion and the pummelingly malevolent Human Quena Orchestra, dials into the spooky synth vein with a numbing drone setting the stage for serialist / radiophonic tone clusters. King Dude rounds out the compilation, loosening up for something far more shambolic in his doom-folk oeuvre, with sweeping atmospheres, wintry pagan drones, wordless chants, and a melancholy acoustic guitar strum girding the proceedings. Not quite Douglas P meets Elvis P (as is the formula for his previous albums), but this long form suite serves King Dude very well. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! All three tapes housed in the aforementioned triple cassette case, and wrapped in a super striking, black and silver ink-ed oversized J-card.
"Ecstasy Of Gold" is one of THEE most iconic songs from perhaps the most famous Italian western ever, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, and was written by none other than Ennio Morricone. And it's pretty much everything you want in a song like that, booming percussion, haunting melodies, reverby twang, galloping rhythms, swirling strings, horns, gorgeous almost operatic vocals, the sound epic and majestic and so dramatic. The only thing missing is that whistling we've come to associate with Italian Westerns (and Morricone in particular), and while Morricone might be the best known of the many composers who scored classic seventies Italian Westerns, there are plenty of others who were making music just as compelling. So while this compilation is in fact named for a Morricone track, you won't find any Morricone here, instead, a bunch of lesser known composers, some we were familiar with: Bruno Nicolai, Francesco De Masi, Alessandro Alessandroni, Piero Umiliani, while others not so much: Gianni Ferrio,, Marcello Giombini, Luis Bacalov, Stelvio Cipriani, Nora Orlandi, Nico Fidenco, but well know or obscure, the sounds here will be instantly recognizable to fans of Italian spaghetti westerns, fuzzed out surf guitar, sinister laughter, plenty of twang, woozy psychedelic exotica, tolling bells, deep dramatic vocals, mournful trumpets, acoustic guitars, barroom piano, rattlesnake percussion, hazy spectral female vocals, swirling strings, whirring organs, and yeah, some whistling of course, plus plenty of strange sound effects, like guns being fired, plus snippets of dialogue, all woven into that dusky, twangy classic Italian western sound, that will hopefully have you searching out more from some (or all) of the composers here, and heading down to your local video store to rent some of the crazy amazing flicks these tracks come from.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES!!! Packaged in a super swank gatefold with awesome images from classic Italian Westerns, stills from films, and paintings from movie posters. So cool!
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Another unsurprisingly excellent release courtesy of San Francisco's very own Flenser Records (could we be a little biased??), this time a vinyl only split between Washington DC's Vestiges and Louisville's insanely prolific one-man band Panopticon - two artists operating within their own unique brands of crusty atmospheric post-rock tinged black metal.
Vestiges lead off the proceedings with two tracks, although it would be more accurate to describe them as one 18 minute long connected piece, with the first one serving as more of a 5 minute intro. And not a second of that 18 minutes is wasted. For the first two minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking someone might have swapped out that new black metal split you've been so excited about hearing with a dusty old Godspeed! You Black Emperor record, as we're first greeted with a serene warming drone cascading under the minimal pluck of gentle guitars. But then the peacefulness is sullied somewhat by a crackling distorted bass dirge - a real calm before the storm moment that wouldn't sound at all out of place on a latter day Neurosis album. Then a wash of cymbals, an almost martial military snare, then the hoarse cry of distant growls, some reverb drenched guitar wail... And finally everything boils over into a furious eruption of blast beats and gorgeous mournful melodies. It's easy to casually toss the word "epic" around these days, but the following 13 minutes more than warrant it. Within their remaining running time Vestiges flirt with the aforementioned post-rock and black metal influences - but also the melodic hardcore/screamo of Rites of Springs, monolithic funeral doom, and the droning hypnotic doom dirge of bands like Hyatari. But Vestiges are still black metal at their core, and when they're going full bore they invoke a stately and rousing melancholic grandeur usually reserved for bands like Winterfylleth or Vatnett Viskar.
Panopticon's contribution is an equally melodic and atmospheric affair, but altogether more unrefined and unrestrained - a welcome detail that has always set them apart from their more overly-polished post black metal peers. "A Letter" is classic Panopticon, showcasing everything that makes this project so great, and is a fantastic introduction for anyone uninitiated. Beautiful lamenting folk melodies are everywhere, but contrasted with some of the most hectic free-form off-kilter drum work you'll ever here. It's an effect not unlike Japanese screamo legends Envy at their best, but obviously much more black metal. The songs best moment comes 7 minutes in when the song explodes into a flurry of minimal tragic guitar harmonies airily floating over dizzying blastbeats and pummeling drum fills. Hypnotic and exhilarating! The following track "Eulogy" is an interesting contrast to this. Clocking in at a (comparatively) modest 6 minutes, it's more like mid-paced shoegazey dream pop filtered through a harsh black metal spectrum, its catchy head bobbing bassline fascinatingly at odds with the barked black metal vocals. Although after a few minutes of course, the drums can't resist bursting into center stage again as the frenzied blasts re-emerge, all the while with shiny tremolo harmonies fluttering atop with the echoey reverb drenched vocals adding a genuinely surreal dream like quality. Panopticon's side is closed out with a cover of a track by Arizona's short-lived late '90s crusty HC/black metal group Suicide Nation's "Collapse and Die" - a frenzy of whiplash hyper blasts and trampling double bass, but with moments of banjo and twangy acoustic guitar that harken back to Panopticon's recent heavily bluegrass influenced lp Kentucky (also essential listening if you haven't heard it!)
It's a rare instance indeed when a split can genuinely be called more satisfying and immersive than most proper lps out there, but this is certainly one of those exceptions. An absolute must for any open minded black metal aficionado!
