The Misanthropic Apathy

Band: The Misanthropic Apathy

Album: Escort by Nights

Genre: Black Metal/DSBM

Country: Ukraine

Year: 2013

Link

I picked this album because of the cover art. The band's name is so well drawn, in a tree-like style that's unreadable. This band hails from the Ukraine and released its first album, Escort by Nights, in 2013. This fresh black metal/DSBM has a good sound.

It definitely has somewhat of a "Summoning" quality, in that it carries an epic rhythm and high vocal flavor along with it. The progression could be said to be somewhat lighter than typical DSBM or metal like Trist. However, this is in the sense of a sort of "winter" feeling like Coldworld. There are some riffs that just seem to randomly appear and be misplaced, but overall the soundscape maintains its ambiance. It will echo the more melancholic moments of good DSBM acts and border on the sounds of Happy Days but without the annoying vocals. 

This is a chill album of DSBM ambiance with some rough troughs. You will definitely get an old DSBM feel.

6/10 for Black Metal

A Premonition - Never Ends + Destino

Band: A Premonition

Album: [Never Ends] EP

Genre:  Black/Doom Metal

Country: Argentina

Year: 2012

Link

Immediately we get a distant guitar opening, brooding. Then the metal starts. The vocals stand out, filtering deeply to do with the music. Not this stereotypical shrieking. This is the genre-metal at its finest. DSBM has returned. 

The track "Sueños" is reminiscent of classical DSBM, being slower paced and more nostalgic. The next one, "The Nothingness", is pretty much straightforward black metal, my least favorite since it feels stitched together more than the others, but it's not bad. Quite on the contrary, since its elements are superb.  The last track, "Fallen", it a slow and steady climb along a DSBM riff. Something almost feels triumphant about it.

I recommend this for your library. It's the best I've heard in a long time.

A Premonition has around 22 albums out, 4 of which are splits. Their songs are in Spanish. I'll be reviewing their albums and giving links as I go through them.

 ***

Band: A Premonition

Album: Destino

Genre: Black/Doom Metal

Country: Argentina

Year: 2013

Link

This album differs from their previous album in its more gliding, DSBM feel over the raw feelings in Never Ends. There is a lot more quiet to be contemplated on. With the label of "shoegaze" on Black Trist Metal, I thought I would be getting something similar to Raincity Longway which also released an album just last year and are Argentines. But it's just brooding. The closest thing we get to shoegaze is the track is "Marcas del Tiempo", which is really just awesome. The drums are active and alternating, echoing in this almost triumphant progression through hopelessness. A piano added only marks the depth of the guitars by contrast, which assemble together far past the simple construction of typical DSBM songs (that is, a drum and a guitar). Real thought and soul went into this, a trve soul. This supersedes the other songs by its majesty and its ability to take you on its journey. 

This is more refined than Never Ends and I recommend it as well for slightly different reasons. 

I really don't want to rate these because... you should just listen to them.

Raincity Longway - Sacrifice

Band: Raincity Longway

Album: Sacrifice

Genre: Ambient

Country: Argentina

Year: 2012

Link

The first track is a simple ambient background like on a coastal town or in a city, except everything is so soft and low that nothing stands out. There are no concrete sounds. When the second track starts we get brooding piano and drums making a melancholy statement, still slow in rhythm and contemplative in emptiness. Very simple music so far, repetitive melodies. Third track is more “icy” so to speak and nostalgic, with a childlike tune of cool reminiscence. A cool memory. Again just another sort of low-key soundscape with piano, drum and background ambiance. Midway it starts to sound like the middle of a God is an Astronaut song.

The track “Sacrifice” is a bit more melodic. Again, this album is sounding like God is an Astronaut but more laid back. I would recommend this for nostalgia and reminiscence, since it generally broods a melancholy similar to that of a cold or cool overcast day, on the edge of a city or in stillness. One word to describe this album is pretty, as well as pristine, as well as simple. Sort of like air made visible because of a cool humidity, a fog, or a slightly fogged-over window. This might make a good BGM for a visual novel. There is even a hopeful element emergent in some parts.

Having gotten it from Black Trist Metal, I can only describe it as “ambient” with any regards to black metal. Buzum’s "Illa Tidandi" is covered as the last track, so I can see the homage to “black metal”. There’s nothing remarkable about this album except its simplicity. 

This seems to be another installment in Latin America's "ambient" scene, like Failure's album Perfect Isolation from before.

Rated 7/10 for Ambient for simplicity and nostalgic ambiance (non-metal)

All the Cold - Heritage

Band: All the Cold

Album: Heritage

Genre:  Post-Metal (listed as progressive atmospheric rock)

Country: Russia

Year: 2013 

Link

Listening to the new “All the Cold” album is like listening to a more ambient version of Alcest with more exploratory, jazzy rhythms reminiscent of recent words by Nokturnal Mortum and Drudkh, and less of Alcest’s dreamy or light quality. The track Zhu Zin exemplifies this mix of heavy and "mystical" qualities. Later electronic/synth effects might turn metal-fans off. It is “heavier” so to speak, but also filled with random riff sequences much more reminiscent of rock that bypass the entire “post-metal”/gaze concept. The data in the download describes it as “progressive atmospheric rock”. It still has its metal influence, as shown by how heavy it is, but it is light enough to move on a misty, progressive-rock uncertainty. It is melancholic, yet in the way that “Моєї мрії острови” was in Nokturnal Mortum’s Voices of Steel. Some parts event sound like the Death Note OST.

It certainly is a move away from their previous work One Year of Cold, which I reviewed about a week ago. I was surprised by how great the influence of progressive rock is, which usually is avoided by metal/post-metal BUT works out alright in this album, only adding to its sort of mysticism and flow.

The names, perhaps as implied by the title, are also not the familiar black-metal titles we are used to. Something echoes of an Arabian or Steppes mysticism in this work, like something of astronomy or minaret-towers quiet somewhere east of the Balkans, maybe east, maybe south.

Sometimes I think I’m listening to a funky electro-techno-nightcore-trance when I’m listening to this album. It isn’t bad, but it certainly is shocking. It isn’t disharmonic, but it’s not really black metal anymore. None of the black metal ambience is left from the previous album. I would say there is nothing similar about them.

Rated 7/10 for post-black metal/shoe-gaze for a unique mix of post-metal elements and electronic music. I can't really name another album like it.

All the Cold - One Year of Cold

 

Band: All the Cold 
Album: One Year of Cold
Genre: Ambient Black Metal/Ambient
Country: Russia
Year: 2009
Link

These guys have a split with Deep-pression. That alone made me give them a chance. My two favorites, tracks 01 and 05 of One Year of Cold, prompted me to listen to the album. Some people call All the Cold a DSBM band. I can see the influence, but there are too many uplifting cords and the neutrality of a calm landscape.

Track 01: "Last Winter" opens up... with the sound of winter. And some cool grungy guitars wallowing in the background, in a decayed world of urban hell. Or rather over a plain of winter. This ambient track picks up a little and stays the same throughout. There is a second part of the song, however, that seems like an entirely different song that comes from a fade-in-fade-out... it is pretty melancholic, ambient, metal. It sounds good, and the inclusion of a piano's withered notes bring back visions of the forgotten memories of some school girl at the piano. It captures the essence of a nation's sorrowful suspension, the age of waiting for a world, for an age. Waiting for something to happen. The guitars are really powerful and moving in this section although they are in the background and must be discerned from the main guitar riff, the piano and the drums. It is a typical DSBM riff but fits so well here and comes out in full power, though it is layered by the other sounds. 

Track 02: "Through the Dead World" is the best Ambient Black Metal song on here. They did wise to put it as the second track. It starts out good, like a typical Black Metal song, and progresses, reserved at first. At 1:23 finally we get the main riffs advancing up a diabolical, self-containing current. It is the forces of nature, of true man, waiting to be unleashed. The explosion of vocals doesn't come awkwardly and melds in with the riffs, making it fit. It is the scream of a soul. It is trve. 

Believe it or not, this song has lyrics and their execution is more melodic in this rasping scream than the vocals of bands like Drudkh. It is filtered through a grainy distance and comes like the true voice of a soul coming from miles and miles of ice frozen over in order to eventually break out, which it will by the end of this song. By 4:11, we realize this. Prepare for the most suspenseful, hunting, rushing-over-distant-plains fifty seconds of riff repetition you have ever experienced. The man is preparing for war. The soul is ready to be unleashed. Finally it comes at 5:00. 

The riff here is so beautiful and great, so melancholic, so reaching, so rushing, racing, running, burgeoning, the full weight of the soul. You stand at a top, a peak. There is nothing now. The entirety of your being pours fourth to this moment, along these currents for an eternity. The final exertion, towards which the song is building up but you don't realize, comes at 6:57. Then it fades out. And you aren't disappointed. 

The third track, "Coldly to Heart", starts out a bit clumsy with the synthesis of a high-pitch, flute-like synth and symbols. The guitars are very much confined to the background. It sounds somewhat like a medieval ballad. When the vocals start, they feel more misplaced than they did on the previous track. So does a heightened guitar. It continues like this. Its highs and lows are good. One of the shorter tracks. It ends soon. 

The next song is an ambient one. "New Day Without Me" starts off with prodding notes, not sure where they're going, testing the waters. As if you are lost somewhere. It is Burzum-esque. We start to get a kind of snow-effect, like a "sound of ice". I know it doesn't make much sense. But it's there. Small pinning notes are there in the background, like the tiny details of something you barely notice, like snowflakes, a pile of snow falling from a branch, an small animal running in between. At 5:06 we get the steady progression of a new current, and in contrast we can definitely hear the other two: the ice-sound and the constant pinning snow. There is a synth and a pensive chime, multiple ones actually which I will not all describe. I will let you delve into the soundscape yourselves for that. At 10:00 it fades out to the second part which seems like another song, a sort of trumpetous effect behind the sound of a constant rain. Then the vocalist says something. But at 12:17 we get a KICK ASS ending to this song. It's trve, especially after having listened to the calm soundscape for so long. It's inspiring, and uplifting, much against the notions of this band being plain DSBM. The rawness keeps repeating. I forgot this was the same song. It's so "active". At 15:11 it returns to a lower energy, in recompense from the epicness just having passed, and makes some very meaningful chords. They advance with a genuine solemnity. It only lasts so long before the song must end, having said its message.

Now to tack 05. I must write specially about it.

The ambient song that really kicks it off is "Message of Silent Space". I can't go into too much depth because it is extremely deep, spacious, because it is the sound of space itself. It starts out slow, with only a strange kind of rumbling effect with an indefinite echo. An ambient current rides in the background, calm, on which you ride and see. You are somewhere, although you might not know where. And yet it is nowhere. It is space. The simple pulls of an acoustic guitar accompany as if to represent the small musing and wandering of your soul within, its thoughts, its presence, its journey. Its persistence and subsistence within it, however small and insignificant from your singular vantage point. The string melody is anticipating something, a realization, leading up to it. It comes at 5:20. You listen after five minutes the distant pin-drops of probes and stars deep in the cosmos, never to return home, and when the guitars pick up, and the drums, you start to realize how hopeless this voyage really is, and that the journey is truly endless. You began this journey long ago, and you realize that you will never see the earth you left again, that the distant planet's existence has been lost to the eternity you find yourself in. You are leaving the sun, you are leaving the stars, you are leaving the arm of the galaxy into a depth never before explored, and to never be returned from. The height comes at 7:12. You press on, your ship made eternal through the endless depths as it will be eons and eternities before ever coming across another thing again, if it does. The chances are small. Whatever you are looking for, it is distant, and it will take eternity to get there. The ship continues on, silent, and you stare from the window of the captain's seat into the fore. All souls aboard, if you are not alone, think and feel and accept the same thing. But you are alone, nonetheless, for you will keep drifting for eternity. 

This song is perfect in its execution and leaves nothing lacking, it is simple, lengthy and worth it. I would have bought the album for this song alone. At 9:20 we come to a new point, the long end of our voyage, for however long we last. But we have been longing for this moment. It is our last glimpse of it, of the life remaining in these depths. It begins to fade out, like the lives aboard the ship, like the stars as the universe around you burns out with advanced age. Only the eldest clusters pass, as you are in a very deep and old part of space. The red giants extinguish one by one, the sky and clouds of nebulae turning dark. There is one last rise in the music until it fades indefinitely. 

TL;DR - Silent Message of Space is a great ambient track. Though not particularly large or memorable, it is special because its simplicity has no error or anything to dislike, with flawless execution and a perfect play. It is a "perfect" song despite if one likes it or not. 

"Last Sun Before Polar Night" reminds you that you are listening to Black Metal. It is one of the shorter songs, starting off with a fatalist, militant drum-line and guitar before falling into full Black Metal splendour. An uplifting synth cord is prevalent throughout. Reminiscent of wide open spaces and a sunset, as the title might suggest. 

"1941-1944. Kola North. War" is pretty much a short raw black metal song. Instrumental. Some okay to slightly-above-average riffs, fits in with the album. It's the shortest track.

"Nurman (Hymn of Cold Northern Town)" is an ambient piece with a piano giving it the reminiscence of a fairytale or a long forgotten memory in childhood, when times were simpler, and snow fell in the winters around quiet, memorable streets. Of an age as it passed away. Very high-pitched synth comes in at 1:24 and it either sounds awesome or totally cheesy, depending on your mood. If you're really caught up in the music, it's not grating to the ears. If not, it sounds digitized and fake. Again it switches to a second part around 2:50 and sounds like the wharves by the sea, the ambience of a rotting coastal village. We hear the sound of winds and a bleak sound effect. In the "third" part of the song, the melodies from before RETURN and it is pretty much the same song. Synth returns. (Sounds like a Gameboy's sound emitter.)

"Kingdom of Snow"... a very sentimental piece, the last one on the album. Starts out in a slow, recompensive look. Synth soundscape, hopeful little rises through the watchful and sullen ambiance. Then we get an echoing piano with a tune suggesting a spacious thing as well, following in line with the album's theme. I have a feeling that if the main synth chord was played on guitars, it would be pretty damn cool. But it reserves itself, floating only on synths, which makes it even more powerful because of the power it retains and suggests in the mind to complete for itself, to compensate if you will. Our last sample of vocals, whispery muttering by the singer. It fades out over a lengthy few seconds. The End.

Rated 8/10 for Ambient Black Metal for a mix of ambient black metal and ambient tracks

NB: times (e.g. 5:20) are according to the album version and not the TY videos, which are sometimes cut or mangled.