Artist: Blut Aus Nord
Title: 777 The Desanctification
Type: Album
Label: Debemur Morti

There’s something uniquely rapturous about an act that hits a creative ‘second wind’ after such a lengthy spell in the game. It’s a rare feat in this industry – so many bands unleash their seminal opus, a career-defining statement of intent that all-too-quickly turns to a millstone around their necks, forever hanging over each and every endeavour thereafter. For a band to finally emerge from the shadow of their ‘classic’ and continue to stride further forward into the waters of excellence is something to be celebrated – and here in 2011, Blut Aus Nord are to indeed be celebrated. Whilst never hitting a slump in form, I’ve always felt that their releases post-2003’s epoch-defining ‘The Work That Transforms God’ has never quite lived up to the tar-black industrialized dissonance of that masterpiece. Even 2009’s ‘Memoria Vetusta 2: Dialogue With the Stars’, whilst undeniably glittering with ethereal radiance, still felt rather unfulfilling.

No longer. Vindsval et al have embarked on an ambitious tri-part project with the 777 Sects series and these unbridled fires of ambition seem to have pumped bellows to the embers of their creative inspiration. If ‘777 - Sects’ released earlier this year fused dehumanized, discordant mechanics with traces of the celestial majesty explored with their 2009 opus then ‘The Desanctification’ consolidates this approach completely. Lurching, groove-heavy industrial beats pound like pistons, the liquid guitars spiralling and swooping around this frozen percussive backbone, the whole record echoing ominously as if it has been locked shut in an ice-cold steel vault. Everything here is stripped back and yet so much more concentrated, distilled like some sort of Siberian spirit for maximum purity and effect.

Blut aus Nord have chosen to inject morbid melancholia into this mix with sections of mournful leadwork fluctuating against a tapestry of sibilant, haunting synths. The clattering blasts which the Frenchmen once allowed to define their sound are all but absent here – instead, the monolithic pulse of ‘The Desantification’ marches at a relentless, grinding, mechanized stomp, infiltrating one’s subconscious and perfectly accentuating the ebb and flow within the rest of the music. Vocals are relegated to mere smudges in the background such is the soundtrack nature of this release and the record is robbed of no power because of it. Rather, Vindsval’s twisted sneers and reverse-reverb moans drift like mist across the bare crossbeams of discordance and resonant atmospheric washes that underpin this record. Such is the fusion of dark despair and machine-like abstraction, it’s almost as if they are giving voice to the depressed, fractured thoughts of the Chaos Engine from the seminal 1993 computer game. Minimalistic, lazer-precise, focussed, affecting and so, SO cold, ‘The Desantification’ is a real contender for album of the year so far.

http://www.myspace.com/thehowlingofgod

Frank Allain

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