Monthly Metal Mixtape: June 2022

Μνήμα – Gathering Sorcery to the Eternal Portals of the Past PT III (2022, Self-Released)

Greek project, Μνήμα (romanized in our boring language as “Mnima”), somehow asks. “What if raw black metal were harder to listen to and get into?” They do this by fusing the screeching nonsense of lo-fi black metal with the screeching nonsense of electronic harsh noise. These unlistenable genres sit surprisingly well together. Lo-fi buzzsaw black metal riffs may as well be generated by some abyssal string of hardwired, noise generating electronics. It’s hard to tell one from the other in the onslaught.

This review is a shoutout to the wild creativity inherent in this project. Seriously, do check out the whole discography, especially this one and their 2022 full-length. It’s all a collection of unique combinations of sounds, eclectic degrees of rawness in production, and just overall is an incredibly playful take on the deep underground black metal sound.

With the few songs on Gathering Sorcery to the Eternal Portals of the Past PT III, Μνήμα hits a perfect stride with its absolutely evil sound, that while it calls to mind Paysage d'Hiver and early Xasthur, I don’t think you could find anywhere else. The unintelligible shrieking goblin vocals that seem to be doing all sorts of random things layered throughout the mix round out an extremely distorted, warbling and layered guitar wall. The piercing harsh noise that sits above the fray feels like a blast of freezing wind weaving into and around everything.

Penultimate track, “Gathering Sorcery to the Eternal Portals of the Past VII” is one of the best takes so far on what this band calls “noise black metal.” It’s a journey of a track that starts with rumbling atmospheric, almost choral sounding riffs, transitions into a menacing buzzsaw with some noisy atmospherics, and finally takes a gigantic leap by completely cutting out musically for one of the most unhinged, cavernous noise (vocal noise?) performances this side of Masonna. This project’s spirit of experimentation pushes the boundaries of this niche genre with an intentional artistry that is incredibly captivating. It's sorta like if Lightning Bolt got really into atmospheric black metal. Give them a try. – Mike Tri

White Ward – False Light (2022, Debemur Morti Productions)

It’s gotta be a weird time to be a metal band from Ukraine. Or any band for that matter, I suppose genre doesn’t really matter too much. The very first lines we hear on False Light, from the Odessa-based band’s latest, are as follows: “This city is deaf / Its nights are endless / Its walls are tall / My prayers are worthless / This purgatory is blind / Its days are countless / Its ditches are deep / Your prayers are worthless.” I know for a June release much, if not all, of False Light was written and recorded well before Russia invaded in February, but damn, does that seem like an eerie poem for the reality Ukraine has found itself in for these five months now (to say nothing of Russia’s earlier occupation of Crimea).

“Leviathan,” the opener these oddly prescient and poetic lines are gleaned from, is symbolic of False Light as a whole. A bit of a post-black metal opening, with some well-placed and tuneful saxophone – I’m not sure when this sax in metal thing really took off, but when done this well it’s really impressive – before unleashing a blackened storm, where specific note has to be given to the unrelenting drumming and the nice atmospheric touches the guitars weave in at just the right moments. And then, around the six-minute mark, it feels like everything winds down and we get to one of the moments that White Ward utilize so well throughout, especially in the longer songs: the feeling that we’re hearing all sorts of different movements, like you would have in classical music. In “Leviathan,” it is a total, three-minute chill out fest, with floating saxophone lines carrying the song along. On my first listen, this was one of the many times I had to stop, wonder, ‘is this still the same song,’ and in amazement just marvel at the songwriting chops to weave all of this together. The clean vocals that add depth in the final movement really complement the harsh growls, and again, foreshadow one of the album highlights, the assortment of guests delivering the goods on the clean end of the vocal spectrum.

If it wasn’t clear already, the thirteen minutes of “Leviathan” are fucking phenomenal, one of my favorite single pieces of music from this year. But it is just a taste of white False Light has to offer over its slightly-exceeding-an-hour runtime. “Salt Paradise” is a dark ambient tune, which kinda brings to mind some stripped down NeurIsis, in those hypnotic dirge moments, again supplemented with some mournful sax. The ten-minute “Phoenix” is another one of those multi-movement songs, ranging from furious, riff-driven black metal – some serious grim and frostbitten vibes, intertwining with that omnipresent at just the right moment saxophone – to some post-metal ambiance. The climatic ending, with all of the elements that get pulled in, reminds me of some of the best moments of the Harakiri for the Sky record that I dug so much last year, with all its post-black metal goodness (and a nice soundclip emphasizing the environmental catastrophe that the song’s lyrics detail). “Silence Circles” somehow jams everything that White Ward has done up to this point into one song, that is a lot more impressive than the chaotic nature of their wide-ranging experimentation would imply. Like, they cover a lot of ground, and somehow cram that into a nine-minute song that doesn’t even feel that long. Bravo. “Cronus” opens with some nice gothic vibes, clean vocals leading the way, before descending into a blackened spiral. For all the moments you doubt the black metal bona fides of White Ward, there are times like in “Cronus” where it is clearly front and center. The nearly fifteen minute title track matches the impressive intensity and creative songwriting of the other long tunes, and if I wasn’t already well over my self-imposed, ‘this feels too long,’ word count, I’d wax poetic about it much more as well. Just know that if you’ve dug White Ward’s ability to creatively weave together disparate movements into a complete whole, “False Light” does all that and more. The whole record is an impressive slab of music and it has been fascinating to watch how all the permutations of what has come to be called post-black metal has led to this point. – SteveO