It’s an incredible feeling when you are randomly sampling albums and suddenly a track hits and a world unexpectedly unfurls before you in your imagination. This is the power, thrill and seduction of an effective soundscape. The dramatic opening bars of the organ shakes off any cheesy connotations as stretched and sombre notes, a resonant and deep beat combined with triumphant horns and a cascade of carefully played, harmonious melodies brings to mind images of castles, forests and a pipe organ being played in a room redolent with both beauty and shadow.
The epic quality of many of the tracks on Nightshade wonderfully off-sets its heavy, ponderous and grave countenance. Many of the compositions on this record are richly crafted with a lovely depth of sound and feeling. Track 5 titled “II” clears the darkness and gloom of the previous tracks with a delicate lightness that is refreshing and cleansing. The sudden shift of mood in this track, particularly in its opening, provides a surge of emotion as you transition into it. It feels like a small clearing of light and loveliness within a dark fortress of ponderous and solemn sound.
The steady, long drawn tones of the organ in the first and middle portion of this album was quite hypnotic at times. It took me to a rather soothing if not staid place. The title of the tracks also made me curious, especially the final three tracks which, unlike the previous songs, had specific titles as opposed to a numerical denomination. Did these three tracks signify something of a break with the opening and middle portion of the record? They certainly seemed more varied in tone and pace with a greater range of emotion and colour. While the first portion of the record seemed shrouded by shadow, there was something akin to grace and a sense of magnificence in the final three tracks. I particularly enjoyed “Solanaceae” and “Atropa”. They had an almost spacey, transcendental quality to their soundscape. “Datura” seemed to be the linking track between the two portions of this record with elements of the previous tracks but with more variety sewn in.
I won’t lie, I pinched this record from someone else’s Bandcamp collection but I guess that is the fun of music and enjoying it within an online community. You can often find music that is interesting and delightful to both the ear and the imagination by browsing the record collection of others. I’ve spent a long time with Nightshade, several weeks in fact. It often draws me in and I regularly become besotted with its soundscape. It’s a good find and one I am happy to add to my collection.
Delving into the annals of acid rock, the fuzzy, lucid riffing, psychedelic synths and funky percussion of spaceseer’s “Pseudomonas” hums with both the subcultural groove and political undertones of Woodstock. In this current period of potential political and social rupture, this track taps into the psychedelic subculture and politics of the 1960s and early 1970s, in a period that saw youth culture, music and politics powerfully intertwine. “Pseudomonas” provides a strong opening statement, it is a defiant call to push back against prejudice, repression and tyranny. This message is reinforced by the liner notes included with the album. However, one note of caution I would venture as a general opinion is that I would be wary about eulogising a mythologised past. The past can reveal and teach things to us but I would also argue that to see our forebears and our collective history with clear, unsentimental vision is a powerful thing indeed in regards to understanding where we stand today as a society and how we may move forward.
Tyrants At the Forum is a collaborative project between Thumos and spaceseer. I am not familiar with Thumos’ work but a brief look at their discography reveals a substantial progressive, post-metal and doom metal influence which clearly carries through into this release. Thumos’ “He Spake Thus” is a sludgy, heavy affair. Discordant riffs and a slow, thick percussion lifted by hi-hat hits, bends and weaves with a surly snarl. The first two tracks of this record strikes me as being on the edge of anger but not rageful. They are directed and pointed and within the tracks’ edged riffing, especially in “He Spake Thus”, there is something almost mournful, a furious, slow burning sorrow. This sorrowful tone is picked up slightly by the album’s third track “Sophrosyne” which shimmers with a redolent and light beauty. It harmonises mournfulness with something hopeful in a rather splendid fashion and I was quite moved by this track.
The closing composition is a return to the spacey, evocative, synth dominated soundscape I am more familiar with in regards to spaceseer’s work. The highly political nature of this release along with the driven guitars of the first two tracks made me wonder how this album was going to end, how it was going to reconcile the spleen it was venting in its first half with what is actually a hopeful message by the album’s creators as articulated in the liner notes: to get the “Tyrants out of the Forum!”. The third track provided a transition out of the discontent expressed in the first two tracks but I’m not sure the closing track provides much of a conclusion or a reconciliation of the emotions expressed by the record. I found that the energy and vitality of the album dissipated into the cool, almost cold, airy synths of the final track.
It’s easy for me to criticise how this record chooses to conclude itself but I also understand how difficult it is to provide a meaningful answer to the issues this album seeks to confront and perhaps this is reflected in how spaceseer and Thumos decided to end Tyrants At The Forum. What needs to be undertaken to set right all that is worrying, unfair and inequitable within our society almost seems like an implausible task within our current system but yet the call for revolution also seems highly risky and potentially as equally catastrophic as continuing on as we are. What is the way forward for us as a human species seeking to organise ourselves as a society while also trying to cope with the environmental impact our activities are having on our planet? It could be argued that the dissipation that happens at the end of this record is much like the ill-defined, unknown but potentially disharmonious future we are facing. It is inconclusive and vague and perhaps there are no answers because we simply do not know.
I really like this album for its tone and what it is trying to do. As someone who enjoys politics, it’s great to see it injected into music through sludgy riffing, doom metal stained discordance and referencing music’s own past. The dip into acid rock is particularly effective at bringing to mind an increasingly relevant historical period of protest, social upheaval and the societal attempt by some to imagine more than what was offered. I heartily recommend this album and invite you to ask yourself what the conclusion of this album sounded like to you. Moreover, after reading my thoughts about this record, what did this album sound and feel like to you? This is perhaps the triumph of Tyrants At The Forum, it asks you to think about not just the music it offers but about the wider issues that give impetus to the emotions and commentary heard on this release which are also further explained in the liner notes. The fact that this record was written at all is indicative that all is not well or healthy within not just America’s Republic but within many of our democracies as well and I thoroughly enjoyed the thoughtful way these difficult issues were musically explored by both these artists.
Photo credit: Musical instrument – Silhouette black acoustic guitar by Primastock https://stock.adobe.com/au/ standard licence
In the next instalment of this series, we are looking at Howlin’ Wolf. The blues has long held my interest as a music fan but I know quite little about the genre, its history and its artists. History and music can sometimes be intertwined and none more so is this applicable than the blues I feel. In many ways the blues, although it draws from the work songs, hollers and chants of the fields during the period of transatlantic enslavement, are actually songs about freed slaves and their descendants with the blues often speaking about Jim Crow, reconciliation, juke joints, drugs, addiction, sharecropping, prison, hustling, sex, love, heartbreak and romantic intrigue (Pearley, 2018).
Like many, I came to the blues via blues rock and rock ‘n’ roll. Regrettably, blues artists are not always given credit where credit is due. Though some artists do make a point of doing this, more often than not, covers are played without real acknowledgement of where they derive and this has in a general sense made the blues quite familiar yet also vague. It was this absence of real knowledge about the genre and its artists that has driven me to undertake this series. So please join me now as we seek to learn more about the blues and its practitioners.
Chester Arthur Burnett who is better known by this stage name, Howlin’ Wolf, is considered to be one of the most important and influential musicians of the postwar era who helped bridge the gap between Delta and Chicago blues by morphing the acoustic blues of the South into something more urban and electric based (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Like so many of his contemporaries, Wolf was born into poverty in the Mississippi Delta in 1910 and was one of six children of Gertrude Jones and Leon “Dock” Burnett (“Howlin Wolf”, 2023; uDiscover, 2020). Burnett’s parents separated when he was one and he was kicked out of the family home by his mother at an early age for unknown reasons (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023). He subsequently went to live with his great-uncle where he experienced a highly abusive home environment and was denied an education (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf remained functionally illiterate until his forties when he eventually decided to return to school to earn a General Educational Development (GED) diploma and he would also go onto study accounting and other business courses to help him manage his own career (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
It is said that Burnett was named for Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States but it was his maternal grandfather, John Jones, who gave him part of his later moniker by telling him that if he continued his bad behaviour such as killing his grandmother’s baby chickens by squeezing them too roughly, the wolves would come to get him and Burnett soon became known in his family as “the wolf” (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). After a particularly brutal incident at his great-uncle’s farm when a thirteen year old Burnett killed one of his uncle’s hogs for ruining his dress clothes and his uncle punished him by chasing him on mule while wielding a whip, he ran away and allegedly walked 137 kilometres barefoot to join his father’s large household (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
It was here that Wolf finally found a happy household to settle into and as a young man, he grew to a statuesque six foot three inches, often weighing in around 136 kilograms with his physical appearance garnering him the nicknames “Big Foot Chester” and “Bull Cow” (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Though his mother pushed him out of his childhood home at a young age, Wolf did attempt reconciliation with her and at the peak of his success, he visited her in Mississippi with an offer of money which she refused due to her adamant assertion that he had earned it by playing “the devil’s music” (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). It was an encounter that left him in tears (Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
To earn coin as a young man, Wolf worked in the fields and through hard graft and diligent saving, a seventeen year old Burnett finally accumulated enough funds to buy his first guitar on 15 January, 1928, a date Wolf claims he would never forget (Mitchell, 2010; “Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf’s exposure to the blues came primarily from hanging around outside local juke joints where he would watch and listen to blues musicians perform, and in particular, he kept a keen ear and eye out for Charley Patton who at this stage was one of the most well known blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta region (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023). In 1930 he and Patton became acquainted and soon afterwards Patton taught Wolf how to play guitar and the two of them would often play together at small local shows (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Patton would also teach Wolf about showmanship by doing tricks such as flipping the guitar backwards and forwards, throwing it up over his shoulder, putting it between his legs and hefting it up towards the sky (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf would hold onto the showmanship principles he learnt from Patton for the rest of his performing life (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
In 1933, Sonny Boy Williamson II taught Wolf how to play the harmonica when Wolf relocated to Parkin, Arkansas (Mitchell, 2010; “Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf was also influenced by popular blues artists of the time including Mississippi Sheiks and Ma Rainey as well as country singer Jimmie Rodgers (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf’s distinctive vocal style came about when he was trying to imitate Rodgers’ famous “blue yodel” which he failed to do, settling instead for a kind of howl (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). By the end of the 1930s Wolf was a fixture at numerous clubs (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Toting a harmonica and an early version of the electric guitar he played solo gigs as well as sharing the stage with other blues artists including Floyd Jones, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood, Jr. Willie Brown, Son House and Willie Johnson (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
While in Hughes, Arkansas, Wolf found himself in trouble with the law. In trying to protect a female acquaintance from her partner, he ended up killing the man with a hoe when the two men fought (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). It is unclear what transpired afterwards, some claim Wolf did time while others say he left town (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). On 9th April, 1941 the US Army finally caught up with Wolf and inducted him into the Army with Wolf claiming some workers in the Delta region alerted the Army to his presence due to his refusal to work in the fields (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf was assigned to the 9th Cavalry Regiment and after basic training was stationed at various bases throughout the country (“Howlin’ Wolf”,” 2023). Wolf often performed his work duties such as kitchen patrol during the day and played his guitar for fellow enlisted soldiers in the mess and assembly halls at night (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). It was at Fort Gordon, Georgia where a young James Brown, who would come to the base almost every day to shine shoes and perform buck dances for money, first heard Wolf perform (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
But Wolf’s time in the Army was also marked by periods of brutality. When sent to tutoring camp in Tacoma, Washington, he was placed in charge of decoding communications (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Due to his functional illiteracy, his drill instructor repeatedly beat him for spelling and reading errors (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). After this, Wolf began to experience mental confusion, dizzy spells, shaking fits and fainting episodes and after being evaluated at the Army mental hospital, Wolf was found unfit for duty and honourably discharged on 3 November 1943 (Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
After being discharged Wolf returned to West Memphis, Arkansas to be with family where he resumed both farming and performing (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). In 1948 Wolf formed a band with guitarists Willie Johnson and Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Junior Parker on harmonica, Willie Steele on drums and a pianist who performed under the moniker “Destruction” (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). It was around this time that Wolf began to attract more widespread appeal with West Memphis radio station KWEM broadcasting his live performances and he also every now and again sat in on broadcasts with Williamson on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). A key milestone for Wolf’s growing popularity and influence came in 1951 when Ike Turner, at the time a freelance talent scout, introduced Wolf to both Sam Phillips of Memphis Recording Service which was later renamed Sun Studios and the Bihari brothers at Modern Records (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023; uDiscover, 2020). Wolf recorded several songs and became something of a local celebrity (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Given that Sun Studios had not as yet been formed, Phillips licensed Wolf’s recording to Chess Records (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023):
Chess 1479-A ”Moanin’ At Midnight” (Take 1) Howlin’ Wolf. Recorded at the Memphis Recording Service, 1951.
Wolf made such a deep impression on both the studios that Turner introduced him to that his first singles in 1951 were issued by two different record companies with “Moanin’ at Midnight”/”How Many More Years” released by Chess and “Riding in the Moonlight”/”Morning at Midnight,” and “Passing By Blues”/”Crying at Daybreak” released by Modern’s subsidiary, RPM Records “Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Around this time Wolf began working with a new band that included Willie Johnson and Pat Hare who was one of the first guitarists to use distortion in his playing (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023; “Pat Hare”, 2023). Hare’s solo on Little Junior’s Blue Flames’ “Love My Baby” (1953) also helped to influence and shape the sound of rockabilly (“Pat Hare”, 2023):
Eventually in December 1951, Leonard Chess was able to sign Wolf and at Chess’ urging, Wolf relocated to Chicago in late 1952 (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). The reality was the blues was about the Great Migration north as much as it was about southern juke joints and sharecropping. Wolf joined the flow of African Americans and blues artists looking for a better life and bigger audiences in the industrial north, namely, Chicago (McCann, 2023). In Chicago, with longtime guitarist Willie Johnson not willing to join him on a permanent basis in the north, Wolf formed a new band including Chicago blues singer and guitarist Jody Williams and it took another year to convince guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023; “Hubert Sumlin”, 2023). Sumlin recounts how Wolf sent him to Chicago Conservatory of Music to learn keyboards and scales with classical guitar instructor and it was said that Sumlin’s “subtle phrasing” and understated playing greatly complimented Wolf’s vocal style and he is guitarist most closely associated with Chicago Howlin’ Wolf sound (“Hubert Sumlin”, 2023; “Howlin’ Wolf, 2023):
Pat Hare playing on Little Junior’s Blue Flames’ “Love My Baby”
Eventually in December 1951, Leonard Chess, co-founder of Chess Records, was able to sign Wolf and at Chess’ urging, Wolf relocated to Chicago in late 1952 (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). The reality was that the blues was just as much about the Great Migration north by African Americans as it was about southern juke joints and sharecropping. Wolf joined the flow of blues artists looking for a better life and bigger audiences in the industrial north, namely, Chicago (McCann, 2023). In Chicago, with longtime guitarist Willie Johnson not willing to join him on a permanent basis in the north, Wolf formed a new band that included Chicago blues singer and guitarist Jody Williams but it took another year to convince guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023; “Hubert Sumlin”, 2023). Sumlin recounts how Wolf sent him to a classical guitar instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music to learn about keyboards and scales (“Hubert Sumlin”, 2023). It was said that Sumlin’s “subtle phrasing” and understated playing greatly complimented Wolf’s vocal style with Sumlin also being the guitarist most closely associated with Howlin’ Wolf’s Chicago sound (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023):
Wolf had a rotating cast of musicians play with him over the next few years both live and in the studio in the The Howlin’ Wolf band which included but was not limited to Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, brothers Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers and Little Smokey Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie Robinson and Buddy Guy (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Wolf attracted some of the best musicians of the period because of his willingness to pay well and on time, something of a rarity for bandleaders, even at times offering unemployment insurance and social security contributions (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023).
Wolf’s success was augmented by his work with blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer Willie Dixon who also wrote songs for Muddy Waters (“Willie Dixon”, 2023; “Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Alongside Muddy Waters, Dixon is thought of as being one of the biggest influences in shaping the sound of Chicago blues (“Willie Dixon,” 2023). The rivalry between Wolf and Muddy Waters was intense during this period with Wolf sometimes quipping to Dixon why he wrote a particular song for Muddy and not for him but whenever Dixon wrote for Wolf, he often rejected the songs, leading Dixon to try reverse psychology on him and offer him songs he said he had written for Muddy which was usually enough to induce Wolf to accept them (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). In the 1950s Wolf released a string of successful singles including “Moanin’ at Midnight”, “How Many More Years”, “Who Will Be Next”, “Smokestack Lightning”, and “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline) with his first LP Moanin’ in the Moonlight, which was a collection of singles, being released in 1959 (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023).
Though the 1950s were a good period for him, Wolf’s fame and popularity reached new heights in the 1960s despite receiving no radio airplay (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). Some of his greatest hits of the era included “Wang Dang Doodle”, “Back Door Man”, “Spoonful”, “The Red Rooster” (later known as “Little Red Rooster”), “I Ain’t Superstitious”, “Goin’ Down Slow” and “Killing Floor” with many British and American rock groups picking these up as covers which further popularised Wolf (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). The blues revival of the 1950s and 1960s saw blues artists gain popularity amongst young, white audiences and Wolf made the most of this, touring Europe in 1964 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival and appearing on various television shows (“Howlin’ Wolf,” 2023).
He also recorded albums with Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters and worked with psychedelic rock and free-jazz musicians such as Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield, Charles Stepney and Phil Upchurch on the The Howlin’ Wolf Album (1969) (“Howlin Wolf”, 2023). The Howlin’ Wolf Album, a release strongly disliked by Wolf himself, was a compilation of classic Wolf songs rearranged with a psychedelic rock influence, was meant to appeal to a hippie audience but ended up selling badly with Leonard Chess surmising the negative album art most likely contributed to the poor sales (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). In 1971, Wolf released The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions where he was accompanied by British rock musicians such as Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). Now in declining health, Wolf’s last album The Back Door Wolf (1973) was a return to the old and familiar crew that regularly backed him on stage with a line up included Hubert Sumlin, Detroit Junior, Andrew “Blueblood” McMahon, Chico Chism, Lafayette “Shorty” Gilbert with the bandleader being Eddie Shaw (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023).
Wolf’s last live performance was in Chicago in November 1975 at the International Amphitheatre where he shared the bill with B.B. King, Albert King, Luther Allison, and O.V. Wright (“Howlin’ Wolf,”). His performance was said to be legendary, crawling on stage while performing “Crawling King Snake” and he received a five minute ovation but had to be revived by paramedics after he left the stage (“Howlin’ Wolf”, 2023). Howlin’ Wolf passed away on January 10, 1976 aged only 65 (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023). He died from a brain tumour, heart failure and kidney disease and was survived by his wife and the love of his life, Lillie Handley and his two step-daughters, Betty and Barbara (“Howlin’ Wolf, 2023).
Knowing so little as I did about Howlin’ Wolf, it was an honour to research and write about him. His voice, his performance, his music and the bandmates who helped him articulate his sound and the sound of Chicago blues, makes Wolf’s songs stay with you long after the tracks end. After hearing and seeing Wolf perform through the archived material uploaded onto the internet, I think Sam Phillips says it best in regards to Wolf:
“He wasn’t just a Blues singer, I mean he was a commander of your soul and he got hold of you with the Blues. The Wolf was a hypnotiser, he hypnotised himself when he opened that mouth and let it loose.” – Sam Phillips (uDiscover, 2020).
I can think of no better way of ending this piece than by leaving you with one last Howlin’ Wolf performance. Thank you for reading this series and I hope to see you next time.
Inspired by Lovecraftian horror themes and the Minecraft mod Vintagecraft, Vintage Story is a blocky sandbox survival game that I have fallen in love with and it thrills me when my interests in gaming and music collide. At the moment I am mostly watching a playthrough of the previous version of the game, 1.16 and I look forward to watching more recent playthroughs of the much praised Lore Update which brings the game to version 1.18. As such because I have not watched many playthroughs of the recent update as yet, I am uncertain whether the soundtrack has changed with the 1.18 update but I did look up the OST and found this version on Bandcamp by Lo-Phi which was released in 2017 and is album version 1.20.13.
It’s terribly hard to separate a fondness for a game from its OST. I find it difficult not to be a bit disarmed by the soundtrack because when I hear it I see the game and all that I find charming and absorbing about it. If you like video game music and chiptunes, you will most probably derive some degree of enjoyment from this album. One element that I really like about Vintage Story which is reflected in some of its more sombre and mysterious sounding compositions such as “Adventuring” and “The Resonance Archives (Library)” is the horror aspect that lurks in the background of the game and some of its music. Fueled by lore found in books and scrolls the game tells the tale of a civilization collapsing, of evil, corruption and devastation tearing at the fabric of life itself.
There are also snippets about class politics and class stratification within the society and civilization that we witness collapse through the discovery and reading of the historical texts that they have left behind in their graves and last stand holdouts. It is delightfully gruesome that many of the historical texts in the game are only discovered through sifting “boney soil” blocks in a pan which in effect is sifting through the graves of the dead. It is also particularly macabre and oddly moving that these boney blocks are often found in desperate, last resort “hidey holes” built into cave walls with evidence of a touching and very human desire to hang onto some degree of civilization and comfort still evident within the ruins with beds, wooden panelling, crates of rotted supplies and personal effects littered throughout these rooms. The ruins and the boney soil blocks provide players with valuable early game loot as well as being the mechanism for delivering the background lore and story of the game to players.
A good portion of the story of the game is also provided environmentally and not surprisingly, much of the music that accompanies the game reflects and deepens its themes and narratives but not in a way that seems apparent at first. What is surprising about the game’s soundtrack and it struck me several times throughout watching playthroughs, is how happy and upbeat the music can be. To be honest, between the amazingly beautiful and detailed terrain generation, its civilization collapsing narrative, gorgeous and subtle lighting effects, seasonal weather, temporal rifts and in-game monsters and predators, I can’t say that this game strikes me as being particularly upbeat but yet much of its soundtrack is rather chipper and cheerful. Initially at least to me, the music sometimes stood in strange contrast to the harsh survival aspects of the game and it played at very odd times throughout the game. It was this jarringness that first drew my attention to the music as it bothered me. The music at times was so sunny and happy when conditions for the player were sometimes anything but.
Being drawn to the darker aspects of the game and its soundtrack, I did find the less gallivanting tracks such as “Building”, “Creating” and “Winter” to be more appealing. I thought the quieter, more thoughtful and sombre tracks embodied more faithfully the sinister and sorrowful elements of the game and to be honest, for me, these elements are what makes this game not Minecraft. Both Vintage Story and Minecraft are block building games but the lore and story within Vintage Story, particularly its Lovecraftian blueprint, is what makes this game and surviving in it so compelling. From a personal perspective I would have liked to have that horror and ominous aspect reflected more in its music than what the OST actually provided. It seemed to me that perhaps an opportunity to synthesize a survival sandbox game with something more blackened sounding and possibly dungeon synth aligned may have been missed.
But if one looks at it more deeply, in part I think the music’s cheerfulness and overall hopeful tones points to the fact that the game is actually about rebuilding and repopulating a land previously tainted with sorrow and death. It’s about creating new beauty, life and history in the form of player builds and player creativity. Through the game’s mechanics, the player confronts the past and attempts to build something new and better than what came before. It is the embodiment of the concept of “hope springs eternal” and seen from this perspective, the game’s soundtrack could be argued as fitting it perfectly. By holding both dark and light elements up together, the soundtrack reflects the multifaceted themes of the game with a strong inclination to what is hopeful and bright.
It can be too easy to become overawed by Vintage Story’s immersive, horror fueled narrative and forget that this game and its world, which is reflected and amplified by its music, is a building game where a player beautifies and makes productive again, a barren world. If this isn’t the essence of hope then I don’t know what is. For all my criticism of the overall chipper-ness of the music, listening to the Vintage Story OST has helped me understand more the nature of Vintage Story as a game and as a concept and for that reason, it has been an enhancing and deeply enlightening experience. From a less esoteric point of view, it’s also a very lovely and reflective video game soundtrack that helps to breathe ambience, emotion and feeling into the game.
Genre: technical death metal, progressive death metal, atmospheric death metal
Sample track:
I’m going on a bit of metal tear of late. I sampled this album late one night and it left me so excited that I couldn’t wait for the sun to rise again so I could have a proper go at it. Looking at the band’s Wikipedia entry reveals an almost complete line up change taking place between 2022 and 2023 with only lead guitarist and one of the original founders of the band, Scott Carstairs remaining. The long list of former members is indicative of something happening within the band over the years but they have a discography stretching back to 2009 so it could be longevity combined with other issues which has caused the line up changes. I can only speculate as this is my first album with this band so I don’t know much of their history.
Operating inside this vortex of unfamiliarity with the band and their discography means I can only take Empyrean as I find it and I must say, it’s a rather wonderful album. A guttural rhythm section and growl vocals keeps the tonality of the record anchored within the realms of death metal with amazing bursts of shimmering reverb-fused guitars riffing overhead. It’s an old formula that many bands employ but what sets this record apart is its atmosphere. Slowed down tempos, synth tinged build ups, at times raw and desperate vocals, ephemeral female singing, bursts of progressive, technical prowess that glow with an illuminated radiance and slabs of heavy, percussion driven, low tuned riffs all bind together incredibly well to create emotionally charged passages of darkness and light. While this strong sense of atmosphere and texture isn’t present on all of the tracks, when it does appear, it’s very engaging and shows how well Fallujah have nailed a technical and progressive death metal sound that works.
It could just be only my ear, but on tracks such as “Radiant Ascension” I swear I could hear a little of Meshuggah present, some of the soloing, the growl vocals and the chop and change tempos carried with it a whiff of the old djent masters for me. Throughout the album, the lightness generated from the more progressive elements within Fallujah’s sound allows the death metal aspects to bleed in at just the right amounts while also simultaneously holding the darkness at bay long enough to give room for the technical side of the band to bloom. In the meanwhile, blast beats, a deep bass groove, wall of noise riffing and deep throttled vocals saturate the tracks with a bracing heaviness that makes the record both a purging and deeply pleasing experience.
I also really liked that the band were comfortable enough to allow themselves to just be technical and progressive players on instrumental tracks like “Celestial Resonance” which also featured gorgeous and understated symphonic tones. I am impressed that Fallujah did not feel the need to cram the album chock full. Sometimes nothing feels better than to take a breather between punishing rounds of brutal music but the break in the wall of sound shouldn’t just happen for the sake of it. Ideally, there should be a conceptual reason for the break to be there and the softly heavy, technically driven and glimmering instrumentals on this track compliments the incandescent lightness and grace heard in snatches on other tracks such as “Into The Eventide” and “Artifacts”. It almost functions as a fuller and expanded expression of key elements within the band’s sound on this record.
Empyrean doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel but it takes something we are familiar with and executes it really well, sometimes even making it rather memorable and special. Wading through quite a bit of lacklustre metal makes the good stuff stand out. The balanced wholeness of sound on this record made it very easy to spin. Furthermore, I also appreciate how it demonstrates how metal can be at times an emotional and varied listening experience and not one that merely involves just violently thrashing around, however cathartic that may be. After all, riffs and percussion can sometimes better express emotions than words. For all my praise, Empyrean is not a faultless record with some drag in the late middle half but it ends strongly and overall, this album was one of the most enjoyable and stimulating metal records I have listened to in some time.
Casting my eye over various lists of Top Metal Albums of 2022, the quirky title of this record caught my attention. It promised just enough oddity to perhaps be an interesting listen. The opening track “The Knocking” grinds and roars with a demonic, satirical, carnival-like if not religious revival atmosphere. It is a track that deliberately goads and entertains with a twangy refrain that holds the melody together. The way the sound came together on this record and also how it felt jogged something deep within my metal memory and it took a while for me to remember what this album’s provocative and flamboyant style reminded me of: Marilyn Manson’s 1995 EP, Smells Like Children. No wonder I comfortably slipped into the soundscape of Doldrum’s debut having spun Manson’s EP for countless hours as an angsty teen while riding the bus in and out of the suburbs, my discman chewing through pack after pack of batteries.
While Marilyn Manson harnessed industrial and goth metal influences, Doldrum taps into something much harsher and darker edged. With the tagline “Haunted Black Metal rooted in American folklore and the occult” you get a fairly good idea of where this band is drawing its inspiration from. Despite its campiness at times, there is a solid sense of atmosphere within the tracks. However, the liveliness of the sound makes it hard for me to reconcile that it’s black metal despite the flat, thin riffs, blast beats, wraith-like calls and harsh vocals on tracks like “The Abduction” but perhaps I haven’t listened to enough progressive and post black metal to really understand the subgenre yet.
I’m not sure where Doldrum will go next with this meld of Americana, folklore and black metal. It has the capacity to develop especially as the band further their craft but it also retains the possibility of becoming repetitive as a concept and as a sound. I’m sitting on the fence with this one. This record boasted some great riffs and driven percussion that sat in nice grooves and the album overall had a pleasing harshness of sound that satisfied along with an almost theatrical, very distinctive and vivid atmosphere but its excessive and over the top style of expression, especially in the relentless vocals, left me not wanting to spin this record too many times. I also wasn’t sure quite how seriously to take this album, it trod such a fine line between keeping their meld of influences working together and satire. I get where they were trying to go and at times, it did work but not enough for me to be completely sold on it.
I discovered Shaman via Korpiklaani and I came across Korpiklaani after reading an article about Finland, happiness and resilience which featured former Korpiklaani band member and “folk metal violinist”, Tuomas Rounakari. I am not familiar with Korpiklaani but after sampling a little of their music I became rather interested in listening to their earlier work when they performed as Shaman, the second incarnation of the band with their first iteration being “Shamaani Duo”, a Sámi folk group which was founded by Jonne Järvelä in 1993 (“Korpiklaani,” 2023).
What triggered my interest in Shaman was their use of the Northern Sámi language for their lyrics and the melding of elements such as the shamanic drum and yoik (a traditional form of song within Sámi culture) with the jazz related humppa and metal. From the outset, I wouldn’t say that this is the most accessible or understandable of melds and as such, I wasn’t all that surprised to read that when the band underwent their name change to Korpiklaani in 2003, their music also slightly altered in emphasis as they leaned towards a more conventional folk and metal blend (“Korpiklaani,” 2023).
Regardless, reading up on some of the history of Shaman made me all the more intrigued to hear this album, which was their sophomore and final album before their name change. The novelty of the elements within Shamániac made my first listen of this record a deeply pleasurable experience but subsequent spins revealed a certain unevenness in the offerings of the album. The opening track “Mu Sieiddi Beales Mun Gottan (Kanöhta Lávlla / Álihasta / Mu Sieiddi Beales Mun Gottan)” starts strongly with a mystic soundscape reinforced by strong drum beats accompanied by deft licks of guitar and earthy yet ethereal vocals. However, clocking in at a whopping seventeen minutes the opener stretches on for a tad too long. It does well to vary things up by introducing a pleasing wind instrument, guitar and percussive combination in the midsection of the song before then moving to a highly ambient, almost symphonic expression with a soothing vocal display. Unfortunately though, the ideas the track showcases so well in its opening and middle half simply peters out by the end of it, primarily due to its sheer length. As a composition it could be said it displays a lack of discipline but the enthusiasm it expresses for its meld of influences is very commendable and if you are patient enough, the track can carry you to the end with degrees of conviction.
An explosion of metal and pace hits in the following track with “II Lea Voibmi” embracing a chaotic and rambunctious yet highly rhythmic and controlled style that makes me wonder if this is not influenced by humppa, the jazz related, sped up style of foxtrot that was popular in Finland in the early twentieth century. The vocals are also interesting on this track with its high and low inflections reminiscent of Sámi yoiking. On this song all the eclectic influences of Shaman are encapsulated and for me at least, it works. The harsh metal elements strangely enough are the glue that holds the boisterous influences together. The strong percussion and pronounced riffs provide a continuous link between the influences, giving the track the flexibility to shift between its various expressions.
The unevenness of the album begins to show with the title track. Though this track is enjoyable for its growl-ish vocals and big, open, reverb tinged sound, the music starts to tire somewhat as ideas from previous tracks start to be heard again. The meld of Shaman is diverse but its output oddly seems to produce only a limited palette and range of rhythm and sound. Perhaps such a diverse collection of influences can only combine in a fairly restricted fashion? With that said though, I did very much enjoy the slightly yearnful “Sugađit” with its constant shifting between an evocative ambience and a bright, wild energy with unexpected flashes of synth and jangly, folkish guitars.
I don’t often include two sample tracks in Liner Notes posts but I really did like this song. Its maniacal and amped up energy could again reference humppa which facilitated group social dancing in Finland in the early twentieth century which might make this track and the moshing it could induce possibly the new social dancing for the more metallic age of the early twenty-first century. Perhaps this is a bit of fanciful thinking on my part but it’s a nice idea at the very least.
Though repeated spins made this album wane, reviewing it again as I write about it made me hear the record with new levels of enthusiasm. It still drops away in the same places but when it works, it’s a rollicking good listen. I like the steep transition between the more atmospheric elements of Shaman’s sound with its more energetic and metallic aspects. I have my doubts that this blend of influences and sound could have travelled much further than beyond this album given the repetition of ideas already evident on Shamániac and this definitely detracts from the repeated playability of this record. However, I still think that it’s worth a spin if you are partial to folk metal or keen to listen to an interesting metallic meld.
I have a strange relationship with Pallbearer’s third studio release, Heartless. One of the most emotionally riveting songs I have heard in recent years, the heavy yet luminous track “Lie Of Survival” comes from this album yet the rest of the record speaks quite little to me despite my desire for this to not be the case. This makes the album confusing to me and it encourages me to probe a little deeper into this album to see if I can find some answers to the queries I have about this record.
It has never really sat well with me that I haven’t connected with this record beyond “Lie of Survival” and I wonder if it’s because of my bad old habit of cherry picking single tracks from albums and leaning heavily into them, so much so that the rest of the album fades into the background. Perhaps this is what has been preventing me from really hearing this album properly? Reading up on Heartless, many critics discuss the sound shift that this record represents for Pallbearer as they sought to incorporate progressive and rock influences into their sound.
I think the prog rock elements is what keeps me at arm’s length with most of Heartless. At times the tracks are immensely beautiful and intricately constructed with doses of deeply satisfying heavy riffage but it also feels somewhat bloodless. I have often found that within prog rock there can be an intellectual distance between riffage and emotion. This distance helps to elevate prog rock to the heights it needs to climb in order to be prog rock but that elevation can come at a price and that price sometimes is a connection to rawness. Prog rock has much to offer but it’s frequently about mastery of craft, execution and ideas. These things are what makes prog rock interesting and exciting but what makes metal and some hard rock emotionally connecting is its ability to vent pure emotion through raw and unfiltered expression. Prog rock’s careful construction and masterful execution seems to sometimes almost sit oppositional to this.
I think this is what makes “Lie of Survival” so captivating on this album. After the gorgeous, technical sterility of the first two tracks the sombre, deep, mournful sadness and shimmering, shoegaze influenced, airy lightness of this track is overwhelming. It feels like both a flood of tears and light and it brings me to my knees almost every time I hear the opening riff. As this track plays out a heavy, solemn, doom laden rapture settles on me and if I were religious, I would say this song makes me feel closer to whatever deity or deities look down on us from Valhalla. These sorts of tracks are what makes music so fulfilling for me. Music becomes a visceral experience.
“Dancing In Madness” picks up where “Lie of Survival” leaves off with resonant, expressive and highly emotional guitars. The lead breaks really sing with a clear voice in this track, weaving thick layers of mood and emotional texture. With light incursions into metal and heavy doses of rock and prog elements this track showcases how Pallbearer’s fusion of influences can work together to create something that feels familiar yet is different. This track is technically proficient but also deeply expressive in emotional terms. Like the final track, “A Plea For Understanding” its meld of elements is a bit genius actually and makes me understand more why this band is so critically acclaimed.
When the album moves towards more prog rock manifestations such as “Cruel Road” I feel that gulf again as I become less entangled with the record’s expression and become more distantly observing and admiring of the technical prowess of the band. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but as someone who experiences music primarily through emotions, it does lessen the overall impact of the album on me. This might not be the case for others who listen and process music differently to me.
It’s difficult to really make knowledgeable comments about this record without listening to it within its proper evolution of sound, that is, listening to it within its discography but in general terms, I think I understand Heartless more and why I failed to bond with the album beyond a single track. Do I feel differently about Heartless after this excursion back to it? Overall, I don’t think so but I certainly appreciate the record more as a whole. So while I may not have fostered a deeper connection to this album I comprehend it more and and thankfully music is always patient and it waits for you to be ready to hear it.
Though I have already written about this record as a one-off post, not realising at that time what this record would trigger in relation to my eventual journey through Blut Aus Nord’s (BAN) discography, I want to re-experience this album again now that I have a greater context for it. Also, it does feel a bit odd to jump from The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion right into MoRT without pausing to discuss a little The Work Which Transforms God given its importance within BAN’s discography.
I think some albums are so enormous they can overwhelm you, especially if you listen to a landmark album without understanding the road to its creation. Reading back on what I first wrote about this record, though it’s not a bad analysis, I suspect that this is what happened to me when I initially listened to this record and tried to distil my thoughts about it. The album had too many ideas and was too immense a project for me to fully come to terms with it the first time around so it’s nice to have been given another opportunity, through writing this series to briefly come back to this record.
Like BAN’s debut, The Work Which Transforms God is an album bent on creation and expression. It is in essence an articulation of the feelings and concepts of black metal. This sounds like such a simplistic statement so as to be nearly devoid of meaning but I can’t think of a better way of describing this album. It strives to forge through the deployment of familiar black metal ideas combined with experimental means, a thick blanket of evil, terror and dissonance. It is a mesmerising release for its capacity to express a very particular set of ideas made greater by its experimentalism. Its bold incursions into the experimental along with its skillful folding of those elements into a plausible black metal soundscape helped it to credibly challenge the traditional sound of black metal set by the subgenre’s forebears.
As much as Darkthrone’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky came to define what black metal sounds like, it would be hard to argue that The Work Which Transforms God hasn’t also contributed significantly to the development of the subgenre. The way it makes you feel, the engulfing blackened sound, the despair, the harsh coldness, the nihilism and horror of the sonic environment that drains all hope while remaining emotionally resonant clearly marks this record as black metal but its industrial synths and chunky riffs make it sound quite different. In many ways, this album didn’t offer the subgenre a new paradigm in so much as an expanded one. Conceptually and emotionally, I would argue that this record stays close to what black metal represents and expresses.
I think many bands and artists over the years have tried to expand black metal’s sound with varying degrees of success. For me, whether a band or artist is able to expand on black metal’s sound very much depends on whether the sound expansion is able to deliver on the essence of what black metal generally feels like. In other words, its auditory and emotional experience must still feel like a black metal soundscape in order to have expanded the sound successfully. Taken in this manner, it could be argued that The Work Which Transforms God does this in spades. BAN’s ability to blend lighter elements and a harsh industrial edge alongside a consuming, hostile and ever present darkness is what makes this album so exhilarating to listen to.
Months after first listening to this record and now hearing it again, what impresses me the most is how purposeful and determined this album sounds. It isn’t just an incredibly cool sounding record, it is invested with purpose as it sought to challenge and forcibly push outwards the parameters of black metal. Through this album, BAN demonstrated how light can be used to create darkness and and how synths can be utilised to elevate the dissonance factor, thereby creating even more hostile and brutal sonic environments. When you attempt to do what BAN sought to accomplish with this album, the end result had better be something incredible and I think many would say that The Work Which Transforms God falls squarely into this category. The fact that I wanted to write about this record again speaks volumes. Its quality and innovation of sound makes it a deeply memorable and significant release for the subgenre. An album like this reminds of how much I like music and how emotionally and intellectually nourishing it can be.
If you want a more detailed examination of this record I will refer you to The Cheese Stands Alone section of the blog where the original post can be found. Otherwise, thank you for indulging me and allowing me to briefly revisit this album. Next time in this series, we will move deeper into BAN’s discography by looking at 2006’s MoRT.
Photo credit: Distant planet system in space with exoplanets 3D rendering elements of this image furnished by NASA by sdecoret https://stock.adobe.com/au/ standard licence
Genre: Black metal, atmospheric black metal, experimental, industrial, metal, extreme metal
After a long hiatus from this series, I felt Blut Aus Nord (BAN) was long overdue to feature once again in the music blog as we return to our pilgrimage through BAN’s discography. The Mystical Beast of Rebellion (2001) is BAN’s third studio release. This album is of particular interest to me given that it’s the record before one of BAN’s most monumental and defining releases, The Work Which Transforms God (2003). In many ways my reason for trekking through BAN’s discography really starts at this point. After listening to The Work Which Transforms God I was deeply curious about the sound and ideas Vindsval was exploring in the lead up to that album and also what came after it.
Whether it’s fair or not, whether albums within a discography are meant to be listened to and judged separately or not, I can’t help feeling that at this stage in their discography, BAN’s records are tethered together by the ideas coursing through Vindsval’s mind and that the records of Blut Aus Nord, particularly their early material, do stand in relation to each other. In reading reviews of this record, I kept hearing it mentioned how hard it is to listen to this album. I agree the initial sound is harsh, thin, battering and very cold but I also thought that the synths kept the sound varied and interesting.
I am a little surprised that three records in, BAN’s work continues to be intellectually and musically interesting to me. I speculate that surely at some stage BAN’s intellectually driven black metal will eventually lose its ability to engage me? However, I find myself being heavily pulled into the hellish soundscapes of this record. I think perhaps my strong disposition towards experimental and atmospheric music helps to keep me very satisfied with Blut Aus Nord’s material. I also honestly don’t think I have any expectations of what Blut Aus Nord should sound like. I am not anticipating their sound so their albums have so far not been disappointing because my mind is open to hearing whatever Vindsval wishes to express and create through the vehicle of this band.
The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion appears to be a single concept or idea, “The Fall”, expressed as a six movement composition. “The Fall: Chapter I” slips into the conventional parameters of what most would expect to hear from a black metal track: blast beats, a thin, cold, flat tone, an oppressive, sinister mood and spectral vocals. “The Fall: Chapter II” begins to feel more interesting with a more pronounced and incessant, winding synth grinding behind and alongside the relentless blast beats. It is anxiety producing and terrific in regards to ratcheting up a sense of dread within the track. I think this is what sets BAN apart from many in the black metal pack in that their soundscapes have a tendency to be highly textural. There’s always a lot happening within the sound. It feels tightly controlled but also chaotic and unpredictable.
“The Fall: Chapter III” has a little surprise, just when you think “oh no, this album is a one trick pony” as the same ideas and tropes from track two rear their heads again for most of this track, it abruptly changes near the end of the song as your ears are suddenly filled with a spacey, metallic tinkling suspended in the same dread-filled environment of the previous track.
Here, you begin to see the conceptual reasoning behind the repetition of ideas. It’s an effective mechanism for building a continuous atmosphere as the tracks begin to link up with each other to form a greater whole. So often albums attempt to create a single track experience from an album but fail to create the necessary linkages to bind the movements together in order to create something that is emotionally whole and sonically cohesive.
Similarly, “The Fall: Chapter IV” begins in the same fashion as the previous track concluded, again creating that connection and dialogue between the movements. The sound opens up more on this track with sawing riffs and a less suffocating and closed environment. Minor melodic elements give a much sought after respite from the relentless build up of dread and tension within the record. With that said though, it’s only a minor release from the confines of the soundscape.
“The Fall: Chapter V” begins from where the previous track left off. The guttural and demonic factor gets boosted in this track. Emotionally this track goes deeper into hell with thick, unsettling rumblings that have an organic and otherworldly bend. It’s almost as if the sense of dread has now given way to something rather horrifying and evil. Something that has actually manifested in front of the listener. Slow, heavy, grinding and stretched synths accentuate that sense of horror. The final track is a ten minute affair. Due to the immense build up to this finale it could only ever have been disappointing. It would have had to be an extraordinary track not to be and creatively I’m not sure BAN were quite there yet at this stage in their discography to deliver the track that would have been needed to fully cap this record and bring this journey to a strong conclusion. As it stands, it’s a nice solid finish to the record with an easing up of the horror as a sense of melody brings the listener back from the darkness. However, I must admit it does feel a little flat given how much build up went into taking the listener to this final stage.
I think listening to this record as a series of connected movements possibly helps to frame and understand it. Without this framework it might have been harder to perceive the narrative aspect of this album. For me, I heard it as the attempt to build an emotional landscape reminiscent of a descent into the bowels of hell, it could be a personal hell or an actual hell, I guess that is up to the listener to settle as they see fit and only if they heard the record in the same manner that I did. Other listeners may have heard something different.
From the strong conceptual and artistic work evident in the first three BAN records, you can see Vindsval was very likely going to one day make a record like The Work Which Transforms God. Creatively and intellectually there is almost simply too much there in BAN’s material and approach to music to not one day make something incredibly impactful and memorable within their genre. It’s gratifying to hear some of the ideas explored in this record make their way onto the opening track of The Work Which Transforms God. It makes you realise that great albums are often a process of building ideas, concepts and skills. This is what makes discographies incredibly fulfilling to walk through, you are listening to great albums getting built then finally being executed as the momentum of a band’s exploration, endeavour and development spill out in a moment of extraordinary artistic creation. While this may seem like an end point of sorts in my travels through Blut Aus Nord’s discography, given what I know superficially about their sound shift, in many ways it’s just the beginning as I now get to see what else BAN does beyond black metal.
This Metal Road 
You must be logged in to post a comment.