Session IX: [Underground haul - Todestrieb Records + Kunsthauch Records]

Hateful Abandon's emotive fusion of blackened romanticism, gothic and post-rock on Famine will find a cherished place in both Xasthur's wrist-slitting fanbase as well as the more open-minded acolytes of early-mid 90s Anglo-doom. Despite the off-kilter vocals at times it still commands a genuine vibe of desolation and despair. Next up, is Ghast's two-tracker EP Terrible Certainty  who charge head-first into the darkened woods of black / doom with a hearty inoculation of some old-school chops for good measure. I say doom there but what I really mean is the strained melodicism of grainy black metal melancholia against slow tempos with the occasional outburst. That said, it's a lot more direct and menacing than the typical self-indulgent releases of this ilk. Decent stuff but what with their drifting compositional setup it does feel like their overshooting their effective playing time with two songs clocking near half an hour. And finally to round up the bounty from Todestrieb, there's Extinction's uncompromisingly harsh black metal on Down Below the Fog. It's a very unapologetic affair - the band knows you'll cringe and sour at its unremitting rawness but they don't care. Sounding something like an experimental exercise as opposed to a complete, wholesome piece of a musical narrative this is more of a one-time listen for me at least. And with that fine dosage of misery we merrily make our way to Moscow's very own Kunsthauch Records a label with a conspicuous slant towards ambient / atmospheric music. Case in point here being  Spuolus' cosmology-inspired Behind the Event Horizon. Synth-laden compositions, slow tempos, and simple dirgy guitar phrases which ultimately run out of ideas after a while. Musically already placed within a constrained frame it will only chime well with regular habitués of this particular black/funeral doom sub-genre. Moving on now to ever more depressive territory with Lustre's EP Serenity. Bathed in your usual minor key melodies without sounding too maudlin this is hazy, dreamy, keyboard-driven black metal with a limited percussive presence which is only there for the sake of it. The whole musical package provides a most suitable audial backdrop against a snow-white landscape (think of a more suicidally inclined version of Vinterriket). A rather befitting title then.

 
.eof