These must be slightly worrying times for England’s Supernal Music – their highest-profile (and selling, one therefore assumes) act Drudkh jumps ship for Season of Mist at the start of the year and now, Blood of Kingu decamp over to the upcoming label Debemur Morti. Has Supernal boss Alex Kurtagic said something to offend Ukrainians recently? Whichever way you slice it, losing two of your biggest stars to French labels within the space of months has got to smart somewhat, regardless of how much they may have done for your profile in the past.
Given that Drudkh/Hate Forest man Roman Saenko is the brains behind Blood of Kingu, it may well just be that he and Kurtagic have both decided to move onto pastures new. Having had the discography of his entire career pretty much released on the same label, it could well just be that Saenko feels like spreading his wings a little and who can blame him? ‘De Occulta Philosophie’ originally came out in 2007 and was a project born from the demise of the excellent Hate Forest. In this, it shares much with the sonic styling of its predecessor – a suffocating relentlessness in both tone and pace, rhythmically pulverising with scything layers of insistent, subtly melodic guitars driving the material forward. Dark, dark black metal with a tangibly threatening undertone – the malice delivered with a real intent. However, there are some stark differences in Saenko’s approach to Blood of Kingu, some of which elevate the project above his previous work and others which simply baffle.
The most obvious improvement to these ears is the deployment of a human drummer – Hate Forest’s drum machine, while lending the material a certain minimalist mechanisation, too often detracted from the viciousness of the sound. With Blood of Kingu, the percussion follows similar patterns as before but is delivered with obvious fury by whomever is behind the kit. The crashing cymbals, frenetic double-bass and occasional ring of a mishit snare only serve to add to the driving power as the tempo here is almost uniformly set to ‘hyperspeed’. This really lends an exhilarating, ‘galloping across the tundra’ feel to ‘Chambers of Inpu-Sub’ and ‘Mummu Tiamat’, the latter of which contains some truly searing riffing reminiscent of Drudkh at their most angry.
Unfortunately, the other prominent development is something of a let-down – namely the vocals (or rather, lack of them). A few scattered monotone chants dotted across the songs - buried so low in the mix as to be next to inaudible - are literally all the listener gets on this front. Doubtless, they carry words of ancient power and to a man so clearly steeped in (and driven by) his ideology, I am sure that they mean an awful lot to Saenko. However, to less enlightened ears, it sounds like a group of frogs occasionally croaking quietly over the songs and therefore, fails to add anything whatsoever to the audio experience. Luckily, these vocal shortcomings are more than outweighed by the captivating ferocity of the music. Simply approach ‘De Occulta Philosophia’ as an instrumental album and strap yourself in for half-an-hour of soaring fury. It’s worth the ride.
http://www.debemur-morti.com
