Following swiftly on from their recent reissue of ‘The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion’ complete with disc of new material we have a brand new album of fresh blood of the north’ from the highly regarded French outfit Blut Aus Nord. Having previously been all at sixes we are now very much all at sevens and this is seemingly the first of a proposed trilogy of albums to be followed by ‘777 The Desanctification’ and 777 ‘Cosmosophy’ possibly by the end of the year. The press information states this is the groups “most nightmarish voyage yet,” which considering that they are one of the most nightmarish bands around is a pretty chilling recommendation and one kind of worries for both their sanity and soul before taking a deep breath and even pressing the play button to unleash the fearful cacophony within.
Divided into six tracks named ‘Epitome 01-06’ the music starts in typical violent fashion with a massive assault of skewed riffs and explosive percussion dragging you through a hedge inside out (backwards does not even come close to describing this assault). Vocals are quickly presented, gargling hellishly like a demon coming out the abyss to gather flesh. It’s a stewed tumult with a giddying fervour. Suddenly the charge loosens, still heavy as anything but allowing the music to breathe and the glistening guitars to cut to the bone. Otherworldly sounds ooze out the abyss and ghostlike voices emanate from the depths. Some of the uplifting meandering guitar work that superbly inhabited ‘Memoria Vetusta II – Dialogue with the Stars’ breezes in before the depth charge is dropped back in and the track unleashes hell on earth once more; fantastic stuff! What I really was not expecting is what is next (and we are still on the first Epitome). That is a sparse piece of electronics with an occasional snare hit; it’s all incredibly crepuscular and eerie and portrays dread for what can possibly come next. After a pause ‘Epitome 02’ slowly uncoils and the band are again taking things calmly and exuding sinister atmosphere around that almost gorgeous enrapturing guitar weave. The harmony is lush despite the somewhat horrible vocal rasp present with it. Of course anything remotely uplifting will not last long and part ‘03’ quickly obliterates that mindset. Flowing between shades of light and dark is something that BaN do admirably and this album strikes as being akin to a possessed child, one second sweetness and light and the next spewing green slime and ramming a crucifix up her…..
There are moments where other bands are felt despite the uniqueness of this act. The background keyboards on ‘04’ invoke ‘Brighter Than 1000 Suns’ era Killing Joke and the chug, plunging bass lines and discordant guitar scythes of Godflesh are never far away; taking BaN into the realms of blackened post punk. The album is littered with nuances that you will have encountered on other works from the bands now quite prolific output but they continue to arrange things in different ways and construct their musical jigsaw puzzle with a genius disregard for convention. The question of course is will they manage to do so over a trilogy of quickly released albums? Knowing how innovative they are I guess the answer is yes. I also wonder what the effect of listening to all three parts in one hit would be and think it could have been an interesting experiment for a listener to have got all three parts at once as a triple album. Then again an increase in building sanatoriums may also have been necessary. One thing is sure I look forward to the rest of this trilogy with bated breath and can only really conclude that this is an essential purchase.
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