Velvet Cacoon - P aa Opal Poere Pr. 33

[This review was a mistaken response to an incomplete version of the album. I like the review, and love the recording I heard, but I have since heard all parts put together (including those parts conspicuously missing from what I originally reviewed). What follows is now just a fun piece of writing, referring to no actual album. Crap.]

Waterfall. Beach. Thunder. Heartbeat. Invariably, recordings of such comforting sounds can be purchased at carefully perfumed stores that should stick to selling throw pillows and tomato peelers rather than these sonic aberrations. I mean, are there really people out there who can’t fall asleep to Merzbow? And if there are, should they be allowed that option? But if we must offer soothing alternatives for sedation and stress relief, Velvet Cacoon have one more choice to add to the display: black metal.

VC are careful to lead us past familiar landmarks on our way toward the shifting tides of their overlapping chords. The record opens with a menacing march through all the dank shadows a good depressive BM album should, but beyond that, put away your bullet belt and spiked arm bands and find a 30-minute video of your favorite Nordic landscape. Here, there are no frost trolls, no wendigo, not even a wolf cub. Just pristine snow gliding on a gentle (but frigid) breeze from one drift to the next. Gnarled trees sheathed in ice sway mildly, sometimes spilling twinkling shards into the soft powder below. High, unbroken clouds whiten the sky and rarely seem to move. VC let every distorted note and chord bleed into the next, eschewing almost all percussion and vocals to achieve their winter calm.

This is metal for relaxation, and depending on your patience for that sort of thing, VC do it really well. Maybe soon some progressive bath product store will realize how nicely this fits between Rainforest and Summer Night.

Azrael - Self

(Moribund, 2006)

Despite Varg’s bold separatist claims, nearly all music that can be considered “metal” is derived from rock music. The guitar-bass-drums-voice instrumentation and youthful rebellious spirit were hallmarks of hip-swayin’ rock ’n’ roll long before they grew horns and Marshall stacks. And a solid portion of modern metal persists in keeping the kids bouncin’ with fiery guitar leads, bang-worthy beats, and vocals extolling the virtues of release and revolution. When judged this way – as an heir to rock’s fist-pumping call to arms – Azrael’s Self is a miserable failure. As a mood piece for the wretched and the lonely, however, Self is pitch perfect.

Opening with four minutes of mournfully bowed strings, Self takes on its black mantle slowly. While the second track finally gets going with a galloping beat toward swarming guitar chords, the listener must wait a full twelve-and-a-half minutes before the first necrotic croaks gurgle over the frosty melody. In fact, only three of the album’s nine cuts forgo vocals, but the early instrumentals give the impression that the music to follow will take peculiar and exotic risks. As a rule, it does not. There are moments of satisfying subterranean chugging and inventive rhythmic digressions, but the bulk of the record staggers somewhere between writhing in the grimy corners of a moldy sepulcher and being chased through a darkened forest by some misshapen dead thing. Even “Sealing the Coffin,” the longest track here by about 3 minutes, does no more than revisit Azrael’s familiar patterns of ambling grief, while the jarring Snow Patrol intro to “Unto the Eye” quickly finds context as it collapses into the same tired gait.

Those who like their metal anthemic and neck-snapping will be left cold by Azrael’s spectral meanderings. If, however, you’d prefer to soundtrack an evening of dread and despair, pull up a frigid serving of Self and gulp down a soul-full of oblivion.

Cleric - Regressions

(Web of Mimicry, 2010)

Regressions is far and away the shitmypantsingest thing I’ve ever heard from Trey Spruance’s Web of Mimicry label. The drum blasts, cursed zombie screams, and sheer guitar crushery have often been elements, but never trademarks, of the label’s most notable releases. While Cleric are surely willing to bamboozle you with instrumental and electronic embellishment, they’d much rather split your spine and eat your brains.

Cleric employ a panoramic style of grinding death that once in a while makes room for a gruesome sound effect or nervous jazzy detour. While the record’s structure (mostly ten-plus minute tracks separated by sub-three-minute mood enhancers) might indicate doom leanings, instead Cleric have conjured hurricane-level assaults that maintain redline ferocity throughout their runtimes. When the pace does slow, distorted screeches and cymbals pour over the stretched chords like latrine-mud syrup over thick, rotting pancakes.

Regressions is best taken in one fetid slab, though individual tracks certainly have their charms. “A Rush of Blood” flashes its horror metal creds before being bent into Trevor Dunn-like shapes, while late track “Poisonberry Pie” waxes BTBAM with a jaunty piano line and clean vocals. The fourth track suggests a rural American road hunted by the world’s last and hungriest Tyrannosaurus, and the ninth takes only thirty seconds to lay out the most basic agenda in extreme music: the primal scream. “The Fiberglass Cheesecake” drops a hyperdense, Locust-esque pummeling before spinning out the record’s final minutes in concert piano melancholia cut with washes of static and mild percussion.

Cleric have created exhausting and exhilarating music, but is it for you? If you ever imagined Pig Destroyer packing up and heading west to crash an Estradasphere show, with a stop in the Rockies to pick up the Cephalic Carnage guys (in one of their greener moods), then you’re in serious need of a hobby. A hobby like listening to Regressions.

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