For the lazy:
Clawing Into Black Sun is a "covers-type" album by a doom/black metal
band. Think Graveyard Classics-type records done by Nachtmystium, except...
Wolvhammer are good enough songwriters to make this
seemingly-"covers" album an original work. This is a covers album
done by a band from an extreme metal genre who are actually great songwriters.
Opener, "The
Silver Key," nice intro, and nice dynamics-- gives the blast beats time to
work and time for the listener to heal.
"Lethe,"
track two, ambient sounds effects, not unlike Salome's only record, brief, then
"Death Division," the most straightforward, "rock"-ish
track here, a bit like something off Wolverine Blues. Borderline catchy, like
Sisters of Mercy on Quaaludes. Sounds like a less-indulgent Nachtmystium.
Played acoustically, you'd probably never notice this was metal. It might come
off as more morbid alt-country, something like Sturgill Simpson.
Arvo Pärt's
doomy black metal. Doom rock? Death and roll?
"Slaves to
the grime," "The Desanctification," are, to put it mildly, quite
rocking tunes....
"In
Reverence" rageful, ends hauntingly
This is not black
metal, it's too crude and slow: black stone, not black rock-- black monolith?
All the songs
are fairly long; "Death rock" works as a descriptor; almost like an
emo, 120 minutes-type of band that's too angry and despairing to write music
that won't scare off their intended audience. They're too intense to pull off
emo. Heehee. Nachtmystium-like. Jeff Wilson, guitarist, is ex-Nachtmystium. So,
figures.
"A light
that doesn't yield." Thin, abstract, flatted-third type chords that sound
like Jack Johnson warped through a Absinthe-stained glass. Builds and builds
and seems to progress, but inevitable doesn't. A good thing: highlights the
despair of the underlying emotions. Trapped. Claustrophobic. Gregorian
blackened death rock. Listen with earphones, and your skull will resound with
these hymns like a mausoleum echoing with the hymns of mourners long departed
the overgrown sepulcher. Jesus Christ that was poetic.
The building
chants at the end of the song should be awesome live.
"When the
edge of the razor is what you need." The adaptable, ever-evolving dirge.
"Clawing
into black sun." Simple, stone chords (not metal) over a r-tard-played
primal beat. For when you wake up in a new place and realize it's hell. And
there's been no mistake; you're supposed to be there. Sounds like something off
Assassins.
"Black!
Black! Black! Black!" nice. Like the 1954 Richard Matheson short story,
"Dance of the dead," e.g., "To flesh insensate!" etc. Like
that generation's plaints of despair, of agony, of redemption. Prayers.
Black, ashen
prayers. And Clawing Into Black Sun knows how to end. It just stops. No
ambiance, no echoes, just... done.
It's a
consistent sound: the baleful cries of your very tissues when they're infected,
or burning, or cancerous; when, if you're being honest with yourself, you
realize that you were poorly designed for life.
Music that
teaches you how to die.
Jesus Christ.
I'm gonna go watch Good Luck Charlie on Netflix now for some ear bleach.
- Horn
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