BLUT AUS NORD is a peculiar band hailing from France. Not only do they have a penchant for the atmospheric side of black metal – a trait they have in common with their fellow countrymen VOUS AUTRES – but they also have a thing for all sorts of progressive and avant-garde flourishes. The band’s mastermind, Vindsval, has come a long way from his one-man black-metal project “Vlad” to the warped and experimental sound of BLUT AUS NORD today. His code of conduct appears to be all about eschewing the inherent clichés of the black-metal genre and, instead, staring long and hard into the abyss in order to capture the luminous darkness in a beautiful, almost hallucinogenic disharmony; for instance, the 2003 landmark BLUT AUS NORD effort, “The Work Which Transforms God” almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the whole shoegazing BM movement. Later, “Hallucinogen” (2019) explored the lysergic landscapes of dreamy, psychedelia-tinted black metal. Now, it is time to unleash some eldritch Lovecraftian horror onto the world as the second part of the “Disharmonium” album series will see the light of day on August 25th, 2023. The new BLUT AUS NORD album, “Disharmonium – Nahab,” comes out via Debemur Morti Productions, and on this outing, we find Vindsval and his band of black-metal rogues returning to the peculiar netherworlds of H.P. Lovecraft as the selection of eleven new songs beautifully reflects the ancient Cthulhu mythos down to a tee. By doing so, this new endeavor picks up from where the previous album, the first part of the series, “Disharmonium – Undreamable Abysses” (2022), left off and takes us further on the journey into a world of sinister, sonic nightmares.
In the middle of June, about a month ahead of the album release, “The Endless Multitude” was released as a single, shedding a little bit of light on the sonic direction of the new outing. Halfway into the song, I became convinced that never in the ages of black metal have the terms, “psychedelic” and “Lovecraftian,” so prominently deserved to be called out. The song unfolds as a long, hard peek into the primordial darkness, throbbing to the off-kilter beat of ancient evil as filtered through the fatal, darksome river of time. The vocals alternate between the guttural, barely intelligible grunts of chthonic gods and the multilayered wailings of tortured souls from Dante’s Inferno. Before the sonic journey is wrapped up with a brief blast-beating mayhem, you are given time to process what you just heard for the duration of the stripped-down section that takes up almost one-third of the song. Once through the song, I couldn’t help but think that this song would have fitted perfectly for the soundtrack of the 2017 Ninja Theory game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice – especially for the ”Sea of Corpses” level where the troubled protagonist traverses, well, in a sea of corpses in the afterlife. If these ruffians can evoke this sort of mental imagery with musical means only, I’d say, ”Hell, yes!”
The album itself opens with a brief intro entitled “Hideous Dream Opus #1,” recalling the atonal score music on the stereotypical soundtrack of any Hollywood horror film. It bleeds seamlessly into “Mental Paralysis,” which is a 4-minute plunge into the depths of dissonant horror. Both tracks prepare the listener for the all-encompassing body blow of “The Endless Multitude.” Sometimes, the effects of psychedelics have been compared to those of schizophrenia, using the so-called psychotomimetic model. BLUT AUS NORD‘s latest sonic explorations would fall rather neatly under such a psychotomimetic label, I reckon.
Then, it’s time for a breather; “Hideous Dream Opus #2” is another one-minute interlude, only this time resonating with a somewhat more liturgical aura, being comprised of just some churchy organ and the haunted wailings of lost souls resounding as though from a cavernous distance. This slightly unsettling oasis of tranquility is soon bulldozed over by the relentless, psychotomimetic intensity of “The Crowning Horror,” though. Despite the fact that the album is markedly psychedelic in every aspect, I wouldn’t dare to recommend it to be enjoyed under the influence of any mind-altering substance – the dissonant guitar legatos alone, drenched in a bottomless ocean of distortion, might trigger the mother of all bad trips.
In a way, BLUT AUS NORD‘s music comes off as though being more closely related to Oriental music which is based entirely upon philosophical and spiritual basis; in Hindu mythology, Krishna is an expert musician who charmed the worlds of both humans and gods by the music of his flute. Then again, in this endeavor, the music sound possessing rather than charming. Just take “The Black Vortex,” for example; the riffs dance to such other-worldly rhythms that they are not just slightly reminiscent of malfunctioning machines or dying bodily organs. Tarsem Singh’s phantasmagoric 2000 film The Cell just recently turned years and I cannot avoid thinking this album would go particularly well with some of its most hallucinogenic scenes.
To be honest, I’m not that well-versed in the art of H.P. Lovecraft, but I take it that the name, “Nahab,” in the album title derives from the horror story, Dreams in the Witch-House, in which the name refers to the secret name of an old woman arrested during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The story is about inter-dimensional travels, which, juxtaposed against this context, is only befitting as BLUT AUS NORD‘s music has always resonated with an aura of that particular sort. This effort marks the band’s fifteenth album overall and, right off the bat, it shows that these dark sages are cutting no slack when it comes to delivering an almost mystical sonic experience layered with beautiful, dark luminosity. So, yeah, I wouldn’t put this record on over a cup of tea on a bright summer day but in the right frame of mind, this one is surely going to be a deliciously infernal experience.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Hideous Dreams Opus #1
- Mental Paralysis
- The Endless Multitude
- Hideous Dreams Opus #2
- The Crowning Horror
- Queen of the Dead Dimension
- The Black Vortex
- Nameless Rites
- Hideous Dream Opus #3
- The Ultimate Void of Chaos
- Forgotten Aeon
Lineup
Vindsval – vocals, guitars
GhÖst – bass
Thorns – drums
Label
Debemur Morti Productions
Links
https://www.facebook.com/Vindsval.official
