With a name like Black Bile one would probably expect the music to be a raging blasphemous attack on Christ and one that (to coin a pun) left a nasty taste in the mouth. Not so, this is actually one for the dour miseries out there, a downer of a disc with little to cheer you up about it. Their name is actually quite a clever play on words that does suit the music here, referring to olden Greek studies of medicine and the four humours, an excess of black bile in a person caused the person to become melancholic, which this is in spades. This appears on the whole to be the work of one Finn Henri Kuittinen, helped out by a troupe of “additional live musicians,” his is a reflective world and one that on first play I really did not like. However the grasp of melody has won me over and despite the downright wretchedness running through this, there is quite a lot to perversely like.
Firing on all cylinders ‘Earth Will Rise’ booms in and with this song title and the album name one wonders if there is a bit of a ‘Planet Of The Apes’ fixation going on here. Quickly settling down, the clean nasally vocal croons and sombre chorus have you thinking of Katatonia and with “the end of the world,” lyricism even a bit of REM. Henri quickly has put his stamp on things and gives Jonas Renkse a really good run for his money here. The opening track is a powerful one too and it is hard not to like after perhaps that first shaky listen. There is plenty here that brings to mind ‘Viva Emptiness’ and Black Bile really excel at hooking you in with miserable sing along choruses, the one on ‘Valerian’ being a case in point.
‘Light That Failed’ does go off on a different tangent, it sounds like a really miserable Indie number. Not the sort of thing I listen to so naming the likes of Muse would probably not really fit this but it’s certainly in that sort of ballpark. Again on first listen I was practically hitting the skip button here but now I am kind of welcoming it. By complete contrasts ‘Divorced With The World’ surprises by going death metal on our asses, complete with savage growled out vocals, apart from the concurrent vocal negativity, you probably would not have been expecting this in the slightest.
At not far off an hour long, this does kind of go on a bit. There are times that the vocals and the musicianship do remind of various different things and there are even Nirvana grunge and vocal parts mixed with what is really reminiscent of the likes of Novembre on numbers like ‘Mute.’ At least the running time does offer a bit of variation and the excellent ‘World Class Scenario’ is left to pick things up as the penultimate track. Still, this is no album for any shiny happy people out there but if you are a fan of the aforementioned this should go down a treat.
http://www.myspace.com/blackfuckingbile
http://www.blackbile.net
