Time then to finish up our second
Members' Top Ten list, and it's from Ninetales.
And into the top three we go!
Wake/Lift --- Rosetta --- 2007
Now these guys I don't know at all, but Ninetales thinks highly enough of them to put them third on his top ten list, so let's give this album a listen. Only seven tracks but again some of them are very long, like the opener, “Red in tooth and claw”, which sounds like there are snarled vocals but so low in the mix that I can't even be sure they're there. When the music breaks for a moment though I can hear them, so I'm pretty sure there is someone singing. Not sure why it's buried so deep though. Music is good, kind of a post-rock/post-metal feel to it, energetic but not that fast. Now it stops and falls to a single guitar, and I can certainly hear the vocals better, even though they're still barely audible. I have to assume that's intentional. But really, this could be instrumental for all the vocals I'm able to make out.
The title track (well, part of it anyway) “Lift” is broken into three parts, the first two fairly ambient and seemingly instrumental (I say seemingly because with the vocals being so low in the mix, they could be there, unheard) and it's only in part three it breaks into something of a monster, with a big roar and heavy guitar. “Wake” then is the last of the comparatively short tracks, a mere nine and a half minutes, with another powerful punch and those ragged vocals, while “Temet nosce” (know yourself) is much more restrained, with a nice chiming guitar melody and runs for almost fifteen minutes. And yes, it seems to also be an instrumental.
The album winds up then with “Monument”, another epic at thirteen and a half minutes, and though there's a great guitar riff all through it, for such a long song it's a little short on ideas, a shade repetitive. The melody does change somewhat around the seventh minute, but the vocal, basically a rather incoherent roar, just keeps going. As a sort of stream-of-consciousness I guess it works well, it just seems to me to be a little unimaginative. Not a bad album overall, though I'm certainly not too down with the post-rock/post-metal scene.
At number two in Ninetales' list we find
Unholy Cult --- Immolation --- 2002
A death metal album. Interesting; the first of same in his list. A band I know nothing about, so let's see why it's so high on his list, if indeed we can. Interestingly, it doesn't start with a big crash and howl as I had sort of expected, but fades in almost progressively on an echoey guitar before it kicks up and gets going properly. The vocal is terrible, for me, can't make out anything he's saying and it's one of those Morbid Angel style, dark and growly but fast. Worst of both worlds for me. Yeah, in fairness when the first track, “Of martyrs and men” slows down a little I can make out the lyric, but it's still hard to hear it. The title track has a kind of rolling, trundling beat to it, but it's hard for me to really say anything about this album at all, as it's all kind of confused and chaotic to me.
Nice bit of a guitar passage there about the second minute --- this runs for eight --- but of course it doesn't last. Solo in the fourth, pretty good, the first I've heard on this album. Decent ending, certainly puts me in mind of a cult. Well done. After that though it fails to make any further impression on me, as we're onto the penultimate track and I haven't even realised we went through another three prior to “Rival the eminent”. In fairness again, there's a good guitar solo in this, but these moments are so few and far between that they almost stand out as exception to the general sameness of the album, little periods where you can see a c
hink of light shining through the overall darkness, sort of like listening to someone talking in a language you know only a few words of and being occasionally able to pick out those words, but generally not understanding a thing they say.
Let's try looking at the lyrics. Well, I do like the idea in “Reluctant Messiah”, where he's asking why God won't prove His existence, a real sticking point in the Christian faith and has always seemed to me to be an easy way out --- “faith does not require proof” --- and the final line is clever:
”Save us from our fate/Save us from our faith”. Yeah, the lyrics are well written and with a very obvious anti-Christian slant, it's just a pity you need the lyric sheet in front of you in order to be able to make any of them out as the songs play.
So that takes us to the closer, which really to me just sounds like much of the rest of the album. It does have a rather nice sort of almost melancholic guitar ending that fades out, but again as I say, exception to the rule of basic thundering noise and indecipherable vocals. Pity, as I could maybe have got into this but it's too chaotic for me.
And so we finally come to the top of Ninetales' tree. And what has he chosen for his number one? Well I have just very recently listened to these guys as part of the “What's that all about?” feature, to be posted later in the month, but this is a different album from them, so I'm hoping to get as much enjoyment out of it as I did with the one I listened to.
Ultima Thulée --- Blut Aus Nord --- 1995
This in fact the debut album from the guys who brought us
The Work Which Transforms God, and which so impressed me, both to my surprise and Batty's. It seems to be based somewhat around Norse legends too, which always helps, with titles like “My prayer beyond Ginnungagap” and “Till I perceive Bifrost”. It's a pretty intense opening, battering guitar and that screeching voice introducing “The son of hoarfrost” (which I guess is Ymir, the Frost Giant, from whose body Norse myth has it that the world was created after the gods slew him) but then there's some really nice slow reflective guitar halfway, accompanied by a “clean vocal” that sounds something like a prayer before it all kicks up again. “The plain of Ida” then comes in on, of all things, church organ, slow and stately, and indeed solo for the first two minutes before guitar snarls in and then the vocals. It's a long song, just short of nine minutes, and a really groovy little guitar riff gets going in the sixth, taking it into the seventh, when the vocals return.
“From Hildskjaff” is mostly a fairly ambient piece, though vocals do break in and it ramps up on electric guitar and percussion halfway through, then as you might expect “My prayer beyond Ginnungagap” opens with a chant, a prayer indeed, very atmospheric, quite viking chorus as other voices join the first, and though the song is five minutes long that's pretty much how it stays. The surprise is, it never sounds boring, stretched or superfluous. It's like every second of this track (indeed, as far as I can see, this album) needs to be there, and there is nothing wasteful, wasted or tacked-on, much less left out. Almost pure perfection in a black metal album: who woulda thought it?
The angry guitars and screeching vocals are returned in “Till I perceive Bifrost”, and yet there's an underlying sense of majesty, reverence and awe in this song that goes beyond pure music, then the harshness is re-established in “On the way to Vigrid”, but the last two tracks return to the ambient, atmospheric, almost gentle instrumental style (with the odd roar) and close the album really well.
Not really so surprising then that this is Nine's number one album. Once again Blut Aus Nord show themselves to have been ahead of the game, in a class all of their own, and let's not forget they were only fifteen or sixteen when this was recorded! Truly stunning, and a fine choice.