Lingua Ignota – CALIGULA (2019)

Even when we’re not listening to black metal, we can still hear its ebon shadow creeping over the land. So it is with Lingua Ignota. The music press seems to be in the habit of describing Kristen Hayter’s neoclassical darkwave project as being particularly black metal influenced. It makes sense – this is an album that’s full of ghastly screams and the occasional tremolo guitar. The resemblance is just strong enough that I’d like to see Hayter’s take on a straight-ahead black metal album, but we’re not here to talk counterfactuals. CALIGULA is a recent favorite of mine, and if my latest (impulsive) vacation plans are anything to go by, then Lingua Ignota as a whole must’ve struck a chord with me. Let’s listen in, shall we?

To summarize quickly – Lingua Ignota is fundamentally about abuse – particularly the kind that can happen in a romantic relationship. If you ask me, though, you can extend this metaphor to religious institutions (evangelical Christianity has… a problem with this) or even the entirety of the patriarchal society we live in. Kristen Hayter particularly taps into the idea of retaliating against abuse, even if that looks violent and even murderous. That specific point culminates in the middle of the album with the lovingly titled “FRAGRANT IS MY MANY FLOWER’D CROWN”. CALIGULA dives deep into into its religious imagery and comes up with something that’s raw, desperate, and frequently ugly. I’ve never experienced relationship abuse before, and I’m fortunate, but it could happen someday. In the meantime, I have to sympathize.

As heavy and sombre as the source material is, the arrangements here are a delight to listen to. The key selling point is Kristen Hayter’s multilayered and versatile vocals. There’s some wild chorales strewn throughout – it’s not an approach I have much experience creating in my own work, but figuring out how to build pleasing chord progressions in this style (and tonality) of music takes some doing… and some willingness to embrace dissonance (not quite Carlo Gesualdo tier antics, but still). There’s also some fascinating tricks with resonance – the aforementioned “FRAGRANT <redacted>”, for instance, features a few moments of overtone singing for your pleasure. This is just the clean side – Hayter’s a gifted screamer, and her throat-ripping antics were sorely missed on this album’s nominally mellower successor (SINNER GET READY). The instrumental side of things works, but it’s not nearly as attention glomming – you get a mixture of classical style arrangements and a bit of harsh noise – the latter’s also used to great effect, mind you. If you ask me, the other instruments are best when they contrast the vocals. “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR” in particularly pulls this off – the last third or so features unnerving synth blasts over one of the aforementioned chorales, and it’s just so visceral. Album is full of these moments, to boot.

Ultimately, CALIGULA is a lot, but it’s worth the effort. It has enough weirdness and horror to grab your attention immediately, but also enough musical depth to keep you listening for a long time.

Highlights: “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR”, “BUTCHER OF THE WORLD”, “SPITE ALONE HOLDS ME ALOFT”

Thotcrime – ønyøurcømputer (2020)

Got 15 minutes? Listen to this one for yourself and come back.

Ice Ages – Nullify (2019)

Remember Summoning? To be fair, they’re still around. Their main guitarist and drum-programmer (Richard Lederer, aka “Protector”) has contributing to the Austrian metal +/- adjacent scene for almost three decades. When he’s not summoning a new Summoning release, there’s a good chance Protector is working on his electro-industrial project, Ice Ages. The two are more closely related than you might think; most notably, “Trapped and Scared” off Ice Ages’ debut got reworked into “Over Old Hills” off Summoning’s Dol Guldur. Nullify hits many of the same notes, but it trades out Summoning’s days of lore and ancient magic for harsh synthesizers and a frigid, crystalline, even apocalyptic aesthetic. The Company of the Ring never had to deal with this!

Summoning and Ice Ages do, for what it’s worth, make for good elementary/middle school-era compare and contrast essays; to be clear, I think the similarities are more important. Both projects tend towards slow songs that rely heavily on repetition and intricate soundscapes to sell their ambience. As far as I’m concerned, “Trapped and Scared” isn’t just a fluke – were you or the original composers willing, you could easily convert one project’s output to another by swapping out the instrumentation (and vocal styles). The arrangements wouldn’t need to change much, though some percussion adjustments wouldn’t hurt. Electro-industrial that takes its cues from ambient dungeon synth is a mood, though; if you ask my mind to conjure some up, it’s going to sound more like… for example, early Front Line Assembly. Nullify offers us less sampling, more (minor-key) melodies, and an utterly oppressive atmosphere, and I’m probably more receptive to it than its sparser antecedents.

That being said, do I want to listen to Ice Ages on a regular basis? Similarities to other electronics aside, it’s not really my wheelhouse. To be fair, neither is Summoning. That doesn’t necessarily mean much on its own, though, since I’ve been known to develop the taste for otherwise out-of-scope music over the years. Really, what’s happening here is the same as what happened with Summoning – I was drawn in by how distinctive the recording sounded, but actually understanding and appreciating the goals here takes a while, even if you’re familiar with one side of the Summoning/Ice Ages coin. Case in point – the vocals in particular take a while to get used to. Protector sings here, but the vocals here are some of the most processed, distorted, and utterly alien you’ll ever hear. It just goes to show how focused Nullify is – its one goal is to grind you down and immerse you in its power. I don’t know if you want that, but if that’s what you want out of your music, it’ll provide and then some. As for me – I have to respect it.

Highlights: “Nullify”, “Empty Shrine”, “Lost”

Venom – Welcome to Hell (1981)

Would it be rude of me to admit that on a day to day basis, I don’t really care that much about Venom? I’ll admit they were exceptionally influential; after all, they took the sounds their fellow New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands were working with, added a low fidelity shock rock aesthetic, and for their efforts became a crucial milestone in the development of more aggressive, extreme styles of metal. Far more aggressive, really – between this and the hardcore punk cross-pollination, the underground styles developed fast. It really is that simple, and that might be a problem in the long run.

Welcome to Hell is, for what it’s worth, pretty easy to describe. First, it’s got a low-fidelity, grindy production that sometimes changes from track to track (apparently this is little more than a glorified demo, but I’m guessing most recording studios in 1981 weren’t ready to handle this stuff). The instrumentation and songwriting is crude at best; songs here are loosely performed and written, and the overall effect is basically a bunch of drunk punks performing a set in a sympathetic bar. You could find this stuff by the boatload in the UK, but as previously stated, Venom brought in the satanic imagery and got some attention for it. It worked pretty well for a while, though they eventually had to figure out a new approach after a few albums of diminishing returns. That’s probably a story for another time.

Really, what we’ve got here is kind of a “dumb” album. It aims low, though it admittedly hits its targets (shock the press) without much difficulty. Let’s be clear, though; I’m not really designed for this sort of music. I didn’t get much punk rock in my diet as a kid outside of poppy fare like Green Day, and I quickly turned into the snooty classical kid once my piano lessons kicked in. If I’d had that background, maybe this would hit harder? Either way, it doesn’t. I’ve developed an occasional taste for simple, even “primitive” metal over the years, but when I do, it’s usually something that took the lessons Venom and/or their successors provided and built something new on their foundations. That’s not an option here! As it is, I haven’t got much interest in listening to this album for reasons other than historical enlightenment (and the batshit outtake that’s “Snots Shit”. Unless you’re particularly attuned to this first wave gutter-punk approach, you’ll probably end up looking for something else after a few listens.

Highlights: “Welcome to Hell”, “Witching Hour”, “Red Light Fever”

James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual (2011)

This here’s one of the earliest vaporwave albums. Now, I’m not familiar with vaporwave (at best I’m intermittently exposed to it or its descendants), so… in retrospect I’m not entirely sure why I decided I should investigate this album. Social stuff probably had something to do with it, since I spent a chunk of the mid-2010s in Facebook groups full of memes and music producers. Maybe that’s a part of the Planepacked story? I’ll investigate. That being said, a good chunk of vaporwave plays on my nostalgia for the ’90s – the mainstream internet in its infancy, neoliberal optimism and nominal economic growth occluding the hollowing of the state, and contrary to expectations, something far from the end of history. Intellectually speaking, there’s fertile ground to explore here!

Naturally, Far Side Virtual aims for musical satire – take the most banal, corporate sounds possible, freebase every press release of the dotcom boom, and arrange the ensuing sociochemical cocktail into songs and soundscapes. The cover art might evoke the tablet PCs and ever-metastasizing flower of Web 2.0, but I’m pretty sure James Ferraro’s heart is lodged in a Nokia 3310 or an Active Worlds server somewhere. One key inspiration, though – Ferraro cites ringtones as both the inspiration for this album and its original format. It makes sense, honestly – you could easily jump into the middle of one of these tracks whenever someone calls you, at least if ringtones were still culturally in vogue in 2022. Needless to say, Far Side Virtual is a very clever album.

For what it’s worth, I’ve reviewed my fair share of conceptually clever albums here on Invisible Blog. At this point, I think of cleverness and overt musical wit as a spice – it can really make your music pop if judiciously applied (and sometimes you do want to ladle it on heavily). Problem is, you can’t just put it on a plate and serve it as a meal. That is Far Side Virtual‘s sin. It’s entirely dedicated to its concept and aesthetic, and the actual musical content is entirely secondary other than its surface aesthetic. There’s not much to glom onto outside the frequent blocks of synthesized speech (If I had to guess, contemporary sock voices included with Windows). Pretty much the blandest possible package possible. I get that it’s kind of the point, but in terms of actually wanting to listen to this on a regular basis? I’ll probably pass. Far Side Virtual is a nice album to ignore, one that will pass harmlessly through you leaving little trace except the occasional, “Hey, remember that weird Web 2.0 album from a couple years back?”

Highlights: “Global Lunch”, “Sim”, “Palm Trees, Wi-Fi and Dream Sushi”, “Condo Pets”

Nahadoth – Masked, Winged, and Hidden (2021)

I don’t know if I want to say I’m full-heartedly getting into dungeon synth, but my life has certainly conspired to place it in my listening rotation! More on that someday, maybe. Nahadoth comes to us courtesy of the prolific Adam Matlock, for whatever that’s worth. Perhaps not a lot, since I don’t usually judge musicians by the quantity of albums they’ve released. By my appraisal, this is pretty archetypal dungeon synth – lots of retro synths and samples, compositions that bounce between ambient, classical, and/or folk tropes, and an overall approach that would socket nicely into a mid-90s fantasy RPG. I don’t have the depth of experience to quip much about that (perhaps something about Summoning?), so we might as well dive in.

Here’s the key, and this isn’t exclusive to not just to Masked, Winged and Hidden: Composition matters. If you have a strong enough core to your song, you can play it on near any instrument and have it shine forth. The good news is that Nahadoth’s songwriting shines. It straddles the delicate line between ambient and more formally structured songs, and it’s pretty thorough-composed, to boot. I can get really sucked into these tracks – I’d somehow managed to convince myself they were especially long even though they mostly hover around 5-6 minutes outside of interludes. Nothing here’s especially complex, but there’s more than enough content to keep songs from getting too repetitive. Even the more ambient songs have enough subtle variations to keep things engaging. It’s not a hard thing to incorporate, admittedly, but the craft is always appreciated.

As much as I gush about the importance of compositions, the dungeon synth instrumentation is what makes Nahadoth itself, as opposed to… let’s say a black metal band, or a neoclassical chamber music act. Dungeon synth can include a diverse set of sounds, but Masked, Winged and Hidden goes all in on its fantasy vibes. Most of the instruments are keyboarded in some fashion, though there’s some live accordion parts (which I know are live because I’ve seen Nahadoth in concert and seen the accordion come out for the finale). The approach isn’t especially realistic sounding, but it certainly doesn’t need to be. Besides my own occasional affinity for these sounds, Nahadoth is also pretty good at mixing them together for effect, which helps contribute to the melancholy, wistful moods that permeate this album. It’s not the most dungeony dungeon synth, as absurd as that must be for you to read, but it’s a cohesive approach and another one of the album’s strengths.

Anyways, I don’t know enough about the genre to say if this is a good introduction, but it’s definitely been a good time, and it’s helped pique my overall interest in the genre. It’s not that far off from my usual electronic influences, but a few changes in the right places can make for a drastically different product!

Highlights: “Falling/The Need”, “No One Fears It As They Should”, “Traveled All This Way To Be Denied””

Captain Beefheart – Safe as Milk (1967)

Here’s an admittedly less difficult album. Before making shockwaves with the experimental Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart befriended Frank Zappa, had a few brushes with mainstream fame, and put out this relatively accessible chunk of psychedelic and somewhat experimental blues rock. There’s something about this era of mid-late 1960s music (early “classic” rock) that feels orthogonal to what I’m usually looking for out of my listening rotation, and this so-called Magic Band in their earliest incarnation seems stranger still, even though the music they’re playing is far more accessible than their later material. But that’s not the strangest thing about Safe as Milk – the uncanny bit is how Captain Beefheart managed to debut with a straight up dirty old man album.

It starts with the production; this isn’t exactly the highest budget recording. Everything’s audible, but the reverbs are weird, the volumes of various instruments keep changing between tracks, and the highest frequencies are lost amongst the ephemera of the 1960s. It’s a bit of an adjustment from the guaranteed pristine or at least intentionally lo-fi sounds of the present, and it’d be anachronistic at best of me to fault Captain Beefheart for not having recording technologies that hadn’t been invented yet, but it does make everything just that much grittier. Sometimes, though, that fits perfectly. Case in point – “Dropout Boogie”, which is this cursed gem of psychedelic garage rock with nasally vocals and lyrics capturing that individualistic to a fault and entitled Boomer mindset that’s causing so many problems these days. Absolutely fucked vibes*. I love it!

The more I think about it, the more I get out of the filthy side of this album. It’s just a bunch of rockers joining in on the psychedelic ferment of the era! I’m guessing if I ran into these guys on the street in 1967, they wouldn’t hesitate to hit on me (I’m pretty sure this is the premise of album opener “Sure ’Nuff ’n Yes I Do”), but the tunes are fun, as long as they keep the intensity up. The ballads here are hippified, saccharine nonsense. Some of that sneaks into the main material, which I guess is pretty expected for this era, but our rocker friends aren’t nearly as proficient in that artsy vein as for instance, the Beatles were. No, Don’s experimentation eventually gave him a path more suited to his talents, but it took him a while to get there.

Still, I’m feeling a lot better about Safe as Milk than I was expecting to. Not sure what that says about me.

Highlights: “Zig Zag Wanderer”, “Dropout Boogie”, “Electricity”, “Plastic Factory”

*I’m pretty sure I’m too old to use “vibes” without at least some irony.

Autechre – SIGN (2020)

Is SIGN just Oversteps II? … probably not.

Machinedrum – Vapor City (2013)

Turns out my facial feminization surgery era had a soundtrack. My previous experiences with Machinedrum here on the blog have been glitchy, but full of hip hop swagger. Vapor City is a different beast entirely. Perhaps the influences are the same, and perhaps the cities collection connection remains, but the mood is smoothed out and chill where Urban Biology brimmed with nervous energy. I guess a decade can change a lot of things! I, for one, am a dramatically different person than I was at 20, and Invisible Blog has also evolved. On the other hand, I can also recognize the contours of my future self within my past, and so it is with Machinedrum.

That’s how I came to believe in the continuity of Vapor City. The opener (“Gunshotta”) sounds vastly different than Urban Biology‘s first track (“Cream Soda”, bifurcated into two tracks as that it is), with its emphasize on bass and lo-fi vocals. Things also feel more ambient – not that Machinedrum’s ever been particularly narrative in my experience, but Vapor City‘s much more likely to find a groove and settle into it for a while. The formula remains, though – even if the vocals aren’t nearly as chopped, they’re looped and used to build crucial song architecture. You also get the typical mix of slowly evolving synthesizer grooves and fast, intricate percussion, though the juxtaposition isn’t quite as intense here. I haven’t listened to enough Machinedrum to say if this is a universal, but it’s definitely present on these two.

Where Vapor City ends up excelling is in its ambience and its mood. These were pretty strong on Urban Biology, but that album has more of a balancing act between its glitchy swagger and its soundscapes, and a devotion to noise and abrasion that’s just not present here. Here, it’s really easy to get swept along for a ride down the album’s metaphorical streets. “Gunshotta” might be a relatively sparse opener, but the rest of the album fills out with lush chord progressions and dense instrumentation. Whether it’s dark and brooding (to be honest, this album isn’t usually dark), or bright and sunny, you’ll have a lot to chew on and digest. This is definitely the kind of album that rewards a repeat listener. It might not have all that many distinct progressions, but everything’s just immaculately crafted.

In short, it’s another IDM album that pushes (some of) my buttons and rewards my listening. I wonder if we’ll ever see any Agargara remixes of this one?

Highlights: “Infinite Us”, “Center Your Love”, “Seesea” (🥰)

Paul McCartney – McCartney II (1980)

My first attempt to write about this album appears to have gibbed itself, for reasons probably only known to the elder gods. Interesting choice on their part. I’ve written about the Beatles only briefly before, and McCartney II is pretty far removed from that era. For what it’s worth, this was far from the first or last of McCartney’s many experiments with music. What we have here, by my appraisal, is a New Wave and proto-electro inflected Paul McCartney. It fits the date and the zeitgeist, but it’s already up against some stiff competition just in this era alone. Can our famous friend overcome inertia and get my attention?

Two words answer that question – “Temporary Secretary”. Let’s get it out of the way; McCartney II is at its most worthwhile when Paul explores the nascent and growing world of popular electronic music. The aforementioned song is built on dissonant arpeggios and the outright weird, even creepy narrative McCartney sets up in his vocals. Very effective stuff, though it’s probably become more distressing over the years, given how much more we know about cisheteropatriarchal abuse these days. This approach, however, pays off most potently if you have access to the bonus tracks (or original B-sides and singles), and therefore access to “Secret Friend”. That one’s a 10 minute treasure trove for fans of proto-techno. I’ve heard it described somewhere as an “analog bubblebath“. Needless to say, it goes pretty hard, and on its own would be enough to make this album worthwhile.

The problem with McCartney II as a package, though, is that it’s still got a bunch of chaff and filler. You get two tracks into this one before it spits “On The Way” at you. If you really need exceptionally sparse, stripped back blues rock in your life, it’ll probably scratch that itch. But you know me – a lot of the older forms of rock don’t hit the way they might’ve had I grown up as they coalesced. McCartney II ultimately dilutes its fun electronic experiments with ballads and the occasional stodgy instrumental. This is less of a problem in the era of streaming and shuffling, but it still drags my enjoyment of the album as a whole down. Admittedly, this is pretty subjective, but ultimately, Invisible Blog is my territory. Everything I write here is going to be inflected with my opinions, and my opinion is that McCartney II spends a lot of time and effort doing things I’m not particularly fond of. It still gets something of a pass because it pushes my buttons.

Highlights: “Temporary Secretary”, “Check My Machine”, “Secret Friend”

Scythelord – Earth Boiling Dystopia (2021)

Super Ghostbusters this ain’t. Once upon a time, I came across the chaotic videos and streams of Vinesauce Joel (aka Vargskelethor), and I was hooked. Then I learned that Joel makes extreme metal, too! Scythelord is, by my appraisal, his “serious” project, if only in the sense that it doesn’t have obvious signs of comedy in its bloodstream. Instead, it’s death/thrash metal with a careful mix of intricate and bludgeoning musicianship. Definitely the kind of thing that piques my interest and can easily result in Bandcamp purchases, which brings us to today.

What does an internet comedian playing focused, intense thrash metal bring to the table? A lot of the typical trends I’ve heard in modern metal are here, which really just boils down to good production and otherwise high levels of studio polish. As a general rule, Scythelord sticks to their chosen lane for most of Earth Boiling Dystopia. Lots of monophonic writing here (for reference, that’s having one main melodic/riffing line without much in the way of harmony or counterpoint) – the band pulls off most of their complexity and songwriting tricks by throwing in lots of lengthy and dissonant riffs. Hope you like tritones! That being said, I don’t really have much to say about the instrumentation on Earth Boiling Dystopia – it’s fit to purpose, but while it’s more than technically proficient, it’s far from flashy. My guess is that how much you get out of this one comes down to how well the riffs connect with you.

Before we continue, I should preface this by saying that I only have so much passion for the clinical side of tech-thrash. You need strong dynamics, charismatic vocals, or plenty of consonant melody or something to really grab my attention. Otherwise, the best you’re going to get is probably along the lines of, “I recognize the craft and expertise on display here, but this isn’t a style that really speaks to me unless it’s particularly novel or it makes concessions to my musical interests.” Enter Earth Boiling Dystopia. There’s some neat ideas throughout, but it’s not the kind of music I’m going to instinctively reach for unless I’m really in both an abstract (even geometric) and thrashy mood. How often does that happen to me? For that matter, how often does that happen to you? Maybe that’s exactly what you’re looking for, though. People say there’s no accounting for taste, but Scythelord seems to serve up very specific flavors that you might just find hit the spot for you.

Highlights: “Equanimity”, “Rod of Asclepius”, “The Other”

Squarepusher – Hard Normal Daddy (1997)

Here at Invisible Blog, I’m at least reasonably familiar with the creative ferment of the UK dance music scene of the late ’80s and 1990s. Once you start trending towards drum and bass (or the so called “drill and bass”), admittedly, my understanding gets fuzzier… but even 1997-vintage Squarepusher is apparently close enough to my IDM haunts that I don’t have to do a bunch of research to engage with it on its own terms. I’m a busy lady, and this simplifies the hard, yet surprisingly normal process of deciding what to write about on Invisible Blog… but I digress.

Hard Normal Daddy is kind of a grower, as innuendo-laden as that must sound. I’d put this down to the overall formula, which more often than not means hyperactive, glitchy percussion girding surprisingly chill and ambient melodies. In retrospect, this is more common in IDM than I originally thought, but it’s still a nice combination that can make for interesting listening if you’re attuned to it. There are some notably harsher exceptions (most prominently, the minimalist, pseudo-vocal blathering of “Chin Hippy”), but overall this strikes me as more sonically accessible than not. It doesn’t, however, have much in the way of obvious hooks in its songs. More often than not, the emphasis is on gradual development of themes and ambience. This is why I’ve labeled HND a “grower” – if you keep delving in, you’ll grow to appreciate how everything’s put together, but you definitely have to do some listening work.

However, there’s one important trick that Squarepusher has up their sleeves – it’s the overall aesthetic. This is some of the most obviously jazz-inspired IDM I’ve ever listened to! I’ll admit that my direct exposure to jazz music these days is fairly minimal, but elements of the genre infuse into a big chunk of my listening habits. Hard Normal Daddy is more direct, though. The instrumentation references the electrified bass and keyboards of perhaps a more fusion-oriented combo straight from the 1970s, and the improvisation and free chord changes take up the rest. It’s probably the middle of the album that draws most from jazz tropes, laden as it is with lightning fast, chaotic noodling that for once matches the rapidfire beats, only to be cooled by keyboard patches. I don’t know how much in these tracks is sampled from other recordings, and how much is bespoke performance, but either way, it’s a pretty neat source of inspiration to pull from, and one that reminds me I should probably revisit my jazz listening days…

Executive summary: Hard Normal Daddy might be strict, but he’ll reward you for good behavior and careful listening.

Highlights: “Beep Street”, “Papalon”, “E8 Boogie”, “Vic Acid”

Björk – Vespertine (2001)

Björk is an exceptionally talented and charismatic vocalist. She is also exceptionally straight.

Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars (2009)

Okay, the black metal thing is fast becoming intentional, though the intentions of this writer, myself as I am, remain cryptic at best. That being said, I have had Blut Aus Nord on the mind a lot lately. I grabbed their superlative debut on vinyl recently, and the other handful of albums of theirs I’ve listened to have their own charms as well. No reason I shouldn’t also give this one a chance, right?

Memoria Vetusta II belongs to the same genre as its predecessor – a particularly consonant and melodic take on black metal. I’d go as far as to say that just like the original Memoria Vetusta, it favors approachable riffing and song structures over the more atmospheric and ambient Ultima Thulee. Which one you like more is up to personal tastes, though Memoria Vetusta I compares favorably to other black metal bands that’ve been seduced by the powers of melody. First major difference – BAN takes full advantage of the digital production revolution here, resulting in a much cleaner and even cold sound. I think this is a residual change from their “industrial” era; even if they’ve shaken off the nightmare, they’ve learned how to incorporate some of the harshness of their past into an otherwise more accessible sound. Outside the production, it’s hard to say how much the instrumentation is affected by this chill. Maybe it’s the occasional dissonant riff, a greater emphasis on unusual time signatures and rhythms?

As far as I can tell, Memoria Vetusta II is more complex than its predecessors, at least within the more traditional black metal side of BAN’s work. Songs are are lengthier than before, with a greater density of unique riffs, tempo changes, etc. If an increase in complexity was all it took to create new favorites on my end, then Memoria Vetusta II would blow past previous BAN recordings and earn my undying fandom. Unfortunately, the songwriting here is flawed; in their rush to show off their more technically advanced approach, BAN has written some haphazard and disjointed songs. Transitions between song sections are jarring at the best of times; the overall effect strikes me as chaotic and disorganized. I think this one might have the same problem as Codex Omega by Septicflesh – a veteran band used to receiving critical acclaim for the perceived sophistication of their music turns to excess, and ends up optimizing for surface complexity, losing some of their essence in the process. Ultima Thulee and Memoria Vetusta I were better at arranging their admittedly sparser palettes in a compelling fashion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if not having to deal with accumulated fame and acclaim helped a lot.

These last few passages feel particularly awkward given just how close I am to getting the next Planepacked album. I hope that if I become famous, I won’t let it go to my head and harm the quality of future creative projects! Maybe I need to work on my humble pie recipe…

Highlights: “Disciple’s Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)”, “…the Meditant (Dialogue with the Stars)”, “Antithesis of the Flesh (…and Then Arises a New Essence)”

Xazraug – Unsympathetic Empyrean (2020)

So when I’m not getting my face KicKed in, I seem to going through a black metal phase; perhaps even an atmospheric black metal phase! Enter this churning maelstrom of world music inflected black metal. I’m pretty sure this is another album I discovered through someone posting about it on trans metal Twitter… which is interesting because the band’s mastermind (Colin Marston) appears to be cisgender. Could it be that we don’t judge our music based solely on the gender identity of its creators? At the very least, Marston hasn’t had a public gender apotheosis that I’m aware of. Instead, he has a prolific career on the more technical side of extreme metal, ranging from a stint in Gorguts, to his role in Krallice (whom I really need to give a second chance, now that I’m hopefully less of a @#%*), to where I first learned of him in Behold… The Arctopus. At the very least, the guy’s band names are on point.

This one, even more than the other subgenre works I’ve been listening to, is all atmosphere, all the time, at all costs. It’s a potent mix, to be fair. The production is slightly degraded and muddy, though it’s obviously got nothing on your average Norwegian second wave black metal recording or similar. Still, this is an overall very dense and claustrophobic sound. There’s a lot of sampling in general, though vocals in particular – that’s where the “world music” angle shows itself. Whether it’s the Balinese kecak in “Grim and Unhallowed Entitlement” or the white voice (Eastern European folk singing) at the beginning of “Arboreal Detestation”, Unsympathetic Empyrean is drenched in song, which interestingly contrasts the otherwise instrumental nature of this project. Either way, it’s an unusual juxtaposition, though the metal side of this album is more than chaotic enough to be a good fit.

Chaos really is the key here. These are very lengthy songs that go through their fair amount of changes, but the actual logic by which new riffs, tempos, etc are introduced feels haphazard at best. To put it more succintly – Xazraug covers a lot of ground in their songs, but it’s not clear what the destination is supposed to be. There might be more that I could discern with further listening, since the gap between my first listen to Unsympathetic Empyrean and this review is on the shorter side, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s just a bunch of riffs stuck together! I don’t think that makes for a great shelf life.

As for whether that hypothesis will hold and Unsympathetic Empyrean will fade from my listening rotation once the novelty of its sonic formula fades? We’ll just have to see what happens.

Highlights: “Grim and Unhallowed Entitlement”, “Unsympathetic Empyrean”

Victory Over the Sun – Nowherer (2021)

Full disclosure – this album shares a producer with the next Planepacked album (Transactinides). That being said, this review probably would be identical if this wasn’t the case… though perhaps sans disclaimer?

Of all the albums I’ve been introduced to by Twitter, this one may be my favorite (though Arca and greyfleshtethered have also captivated me recently). But it’s quite literally microtonal metal music from a trans creator, so what do you expect? Victory Over the Sun‘s previous album wormed its way into my heart for the latter reason (despite its use of a 12 note scale), but this just ratchets up the intensity further. That being said, I should recommend caution, since an album being performed in a style you enjoy isn’t an ironclad guarantee that you’ll like it… but I listened to Nowherer repeatedly before deciding to write about it. I know how quickly this is going to descend into fangirling, so caveat lector, I guess.

The big thing about this album, at least from my perspective, is that it manages to make its microtonal approach sound familiar and accessible in a way that (at the very least) my other microtonal black metal fix doesn’t. My first guess was the choice of scale (17EDO) providing a good chunk of familiar sounding intervals, but Jute Gyte uses quarter tones – Adam Kalmbach could theoretically just use it to perform familiar, diatonic scale music in a humorous if pointless exercise. To elaborate on the Jute Gyte comparison, VotS writes more conventionally, with lots of recognizable and near-consonant melody (“Alveromancy” being a prime example) sweetening this package much like it did A Tessitura of Transfiguration. As much as I enjoy some abstract and particularly abrasive tracks, this album strikes a good balance between such experiments and providing a recognizable extreme metal experience, which is appreciated!

This really just ends up being the same type of success as VotS’s last album – good, solid songwriting that takes advantage of a well-defined palette of sounds. Nowherer, for what it’s worth, reads as significantly more aggressive than Tessitura. One key is the production, which is significantly louder and clearer than before. The tempos are reliably faster as well – where Tessitura was slow and moody, Nowherer churns like a maelstrom in a troubled sea, resplendent with blastbeats and another charismatic vocal performance from band mastermind Vivian Tylinska. The only thing that might be missing from this one is an overarching narrative and lyrical concept, but the poetic, even abstract libretto remains, even if the exact words aren’t easy to pick out…

Unsurprisingly, this is another album I highly recommend, and one that I’m sure the still very implausible cisgender alternate version of myself would enjoy as well. Not sure why this hypothetical person has to deal more with VotS than any of the other trans-fronted metal et al music, but whatever.

Highlights: “Alveromancy”, “Oscines” (…which is over half the album!)

Enslaved – Hordanes Land (1993)

You know, when I think about it, I’ve listened to a lot of Enslaved’s discography. My familiarity ends after 2003’s Below The Lights, but a good chunk of the stuff before that has earned my affections and repeated spins. Hordanes Land has the amusing honor of being the first album I ever purchased off Bandcamp – no matter what unspeakable brutalities Epic Games might inflict on it in the future, I’ll cherish that memory. Anyways, this is a primeval era for Enslaved – they were developing their signature “Viking” black metal sound, but what we get on this EP is a band that already knows what they want to do and has some idea of how to go about it. That being said, they’re not quite to their first stop yet.

This EP is archetypal old school Enslaved – extended and melodic black metal songs that strike a balance between aggression and ambience. It’s probably a result of the production, but this strikes me as more direct than Vikingligr veldi, yet gentler than Frost. Recent years have seen some remasters, but the essential character of the mix seems unchanged – degraded and rough around the edges, with loud vocals and percussion, but otherwise carefully balanced. It gets the point across, and black metal isn’t stereotypically supposed to be too shiny and professional sounding. I’d honestly describe most of the instrumental and production side of things as middle of the road for the early ’90s Norwegian sound – Hordanes Land and period Enslaved in general tread a narrow line between atavistic primitivism and a more elaborate approach.

Like its immediate successors, how much you get out of Hordanes Land is going to depend on your tastes for repetition in the name of atmosphere. There’s definite structure here, but this era of Enslaved sees them spend a long time on each of their musical ideas, so the actual idea density isn’t all that high. To be honest, things feel less architected and more haphazard than on later albums; I guess it’s to be expected when your budget and experience levels are limited. Enslaved would be quick to write and record songs that handled repetition more effectively and used more compelling ideas, for what it’s worth. But the end result at this point in their career is an EP that’s pleasant to listen to when it comes on, yet one that I’m not so likely to seek out of my own accord. Clementine and S2 get the final say more often than not.

If you’re interested in tracking the historical evolution of Enslaved, you’ll still need this one, but the rest of you might want to check out the full-lengths first.

Highlights: “Alfadr Odhinn”

Arcturus – The Sham Mirrors (2002)

What exactly is Arcturus’s aesthetic? They seem to look to the stars, but not in the clearly sci-fi inflected way that someone like I would. I’ve decided, perhaps capriciously, to call The Sham Mirrors astrology metal. Not due to any specific references (though, to be honest, since I don’t really care what astrologers have to say I could easily miss such), but really more due to how the album is structured and written. For all intents and purposes, this is a continuation of La Masquerade Infernale‘s vaguely proggy, mostly symphonic, and electronica tinged metal sounds. We’re in the nebulous realm of post-black metal, folks! In their defense, the turn of the millennium was a time of fusion and creative flowering, and both of those are appreciated around here.

Anyways, The Sham Mirrors is a sleeker and very possibly sexier take on Arcturus than its predecessor… maybe not quite up to Perdition City levels, even if they’ve got the same trickster as integral band members. La Masquerade Infernale went all in on melodrama, and nowhere was that more prominent than in Kristofer Rygg’s vaguely operatic, deep vocals. It fit the style there, so his decision to favor higher, cleaner, beltier vocals is a big paradigm shift. This style is much easier for me to imitate, should I ever decide Planepacked ought to cover Arcturus! Outside the vocals, we have a more incisive and trebly production, which surprisingly isn’t always as clear as the predecessor. It does fit what strikes me as also a more aggressive album; one that more frequently dips into the icy reservoirs of extremity (culminating in “Radical Cut”, which features Ihsahn’s harshes and comes off as an arctic blast).

Compared to the sheer concept album-ness of La Masquerade Infernale, I’m not sure if The Sham Mirrors is as focused in terms of what it sets out to do. That being said, the music’s more than on point regardless. At its best, this album really does shine; it’s nice seeing a more aggressive Arcturus, one that pays occasional tribute to its roots while making sure to develop its themes properly (I’ve said it before; I am not a fan of Arcturus’s full length debut). I also have the vague sense that this one’s more consistent than La Masquerade Infernale, but that’s a subtle difference at best. Which one I end up reaching for probably depends more on my mood than any significant musicological differences; I wouldn’t be surprised if other listeners felt the same way. Either way, definitely worth your time and study.

Highlights: “Nightmare Heaven”, “Collapse Generation”, “Star Crossed”

Brutality – When The Sky Turns Black (1994)

The last I discussed Brutality, it was in reference to my struggle to get into the band, with the admitted exception of their well crafted if not particularly distinct debut. When the Sky Turns Black struck me, at first listen, as more of the same, for better or worse. Even the lineup is 80% the same (though one of the guitarists was replaced for reasons unknown to the likes of me). More versatile, jack of all trades death metal isn’t a bad thing by any measure, but the sheer acceptability of Brutality’s approach makes it harder by far to write meaningfully about than better or worse albums. A girl needs a challenge, though! [more?]

There’s clearly been some attempt to refine the Brutality sound here. This is most obvious in the mix; everything remains trebly for death metal, but there’s more bass here than there was on Screams of Anguish. I think this quite literally comes down to the bassist actually being subtly audible here, though any attempts Jeff Acres (who also handles vox) makes to differentiate his parts from those of the guitars have slipped past my ears. There aren’t much in the way of instrumental changes otherwise, though all the performances feel just a hair tighter and more intentional than before. I’m also under the impression that the riffs here are more dissonant than before, though Brutality is far from discarding the melodic touches they employed on the previous album. All of these changes, though, are very subtle; enough so that if I’m not paying a great deal of attention, I begin to question whether things have actually changed all that much.

Really, if you felt X way about Screams of Anguish, you’d expect to feel about the same about When The Sky Turns Black. That being said, it still feels like something‘s been lost – something that eludes me. Perhaps the songs are just that bit more haphazard? Perhaps some melodic prowess is missing? This could be one of those metal albums that consciously tries to imitate its predecessors, but loses some important part of itself in the process. I don’t really enjoy describing music as having that problem, especially since I’d rather be able to analyze what’s going on, and understand why I enjoy something less than I’d expect. Sometimes, though, the glove just fits, and I therefore can’t acquit. So it is with When The Sky Turns Black – maybe you’ll get some enjoyment out of it if your tastes are attuned to what it offers?

Highlights: “Race Defects”, “Electric Funeral”, “Screams of Anguish”

Machinedrum – Urban Biology (2002)

Today on Invisible Blog, we’re up against another recentish discovery; one that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have found out about without my previous exposure to Agargara. That being said, Machinedrum’s mastermind (Travis Stewart) has collaborated widely and gotten his name onto a lot of things I’ve listened to, so maybe it was only a matter of time. Urban Biology seems to be one of the guy’s earlier studio releases, for whatever it’s worth, but it’s clear that already he’d found a sound he liked – extra glitchy, hip-hop inspired IDM. This is a particularly chopped up album, shot through with samples and abrasive synth, and I can imagine how it’d irritate some folks looking for less chaotic music, but I am not those people, and order is not the name of this album!

Urban Biology works out to be an imposing package – 71 minutes of breaks and glitches for your brain to process. It’s nominally instrumental, but there’s a lot of sampled speech, whether through outright film references (the self titled track, which is an interlude), or throughly chopped up singing/rapping. Most of the potential word content here has been scrambled in service of building better beats; understandably, so has the percussion. We frequently end up with hyperactive drum patterns, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition with the typically calmer synthesizers providing our melodic backing. While specific examples unfortunately elude me, I know I’ve heard this sort of tempo mismatch in the past; it allows you to do some neat things with rhythm that you might not be able to otherwise.

As exciting as the chopped up percussion and vocals can be, I actually think Urban Biology excels more at building ambient soundscapes. I don’t know how strictly intended this was, but Machinedrum really matches the title of this album with that ineffable feeling of city hustle and overcast days you can get from living in the right sort of metropolitan area. It definitely works for Boston, and probably also fits a lot of the cities in the northern US/Canada/UK, but perhaps it’s not as descriptive of sunnier, hotter lands? Oh well. The overall approach reminds me a bit of Boards of Canada on Geogaddi – everything’s detuned, hazy, distant, and not especially complicated in terms of progressions. Two major differences – Machinedrum is presumably pulling on newer influences than the psychedelic ’70s nostalgia of BoC, and BoC prefers more intricate melodies and chord progressions than what I’m hearing here. Still, it’s good to have that sort of reference point when discussing music.

Anyways, this has been a very nice discovery. It’s always neat to get your breadcrumbs directly from your music library!

Highlights: “Countchocula”, “Uptown”, “Jigga Why”