Black metal at its best evokes the icy, windswept tundra of a desolate, snow-strewn landscape. Here, Theologian attempt a similar feat with swirling electronics, lost voices and a heavy drone that thunders from the speakers with a power that is liable to take you by surprise if you are under-cautious with the volume control. According to the lengthy press missive that accompanied this release ‘the further I get from your star, the less light I feel on my face’ “is the latest chapter from the New York power electronics/synth-death demon Leech”. Stunningly hyperbolic and obscure, a better description would be a dark trip into the Inferno via a soundscape that crosses Axis of perdition, Skullflower and bass communion to often terrifying effect… well, that would be my description anyway.
Like most music of this type, Theologian is treated with utmost respect; from the packaging to the artwork that adorns it, everything is the result of a massive artistic effort. The CD comes encased in a DVD sized box which folds out to reveal shadowy forms overlaid with text and which lays maximum emphasis on the beautifully designed cover recalling the excellent work that went into the Bass Communion albums. Once placed inside your CD player, it is best to retreat and listen at high volume with nothing else going on to distract you from immersing yourself deep inside the music and, as ‘Zero’ resonates through your body thanks to the hulking bass frequencies which threaten to permanently sever cordial relations with your neighbours, lose yourself inside the dark journey Leech so obviously desires to take you upon. A short, sharp shock of overloaded electronics and howling noise ‘Zero’ sounds like nothing so much as the ambient soundtrack to a nightmare and as hissing, distorted, phased noise swirls through the speakers the effect is not dissimilar to the traumatising, misanthropic noise of Skullflower’s speaker-destroying efforts. Less harrowing but equally hypnotic, ‘In times of need, we all go against our natures’ is a languid, icy track that builds upon a huge rumbling bass over twenty-four nerve-fraying minutes while it recalls endless nightmares of long, empty corridors and rusted nails scraped upon the surface of a broken chalk-board smeared with blood. Hypnotic, soul-crushing, bleak and empty, this is music for the imagination – with the overwhelming noise providing the perfect backdrop for your own thoughts to run free – and it is best played, like Sunn 0))), at earth-shattering volume so that you can feel it as much as hear it.
After so lengthy a track, you’d imagine it’d be difficult to maintain interest, but the sub-sonic rumble of ‘unfamiliar skies’ which sounds like a Black Sabbath concert played at about 2 BPM does a fair job of dragging you yet further into the stygian blackness that Theologian inhabit. It’s hard to tell exactly what instruments were used to create the evil miasma that constitutes the track but the overwhelming sound is one of a distorted, dangerously overloaded guitar left to drone in a barely-candle-lit studio somewhere near the mouth of hell. It’s a dark, wonderful sound that conjures up an image of Sunn 0))) produced by Trent Reznor and as the track ebbs and flows and the waves of darkness surround and enclose, high frequency string-scrapes tear holes in the ambience snapping you out of your reverie in an instant while screaming, indistinct voices offer no respite from the discordant menace of the instrumentation. The title track is up next, and in contrast to the other tracks it opens in silence, with a trembling wave of noise slowly filling the void until your speakers are juddering with the bass frequencies. Like the silken art-noise of Bass communion it is seductive and dark, but unlike that band, the overwhelming barrage demands utter submission to appreciate the patterns that develop deep within its blackened heart. After six minutes of slowly developing, psychedelic noise, a metallic vocal rips open the fabric of the track and utters dense proclamations impossible to understand without the lyrics reprinted in the packaging. With the previous track having dissolved into a hailstorm of static, ‘bearing better fruit’ opens out of that same mire with sparse electronics and screaming breaking through the barrier of white noise separating us from Leech. It’s a chaotic, fragmented, squally track that pounds into your brain like a jackhammer before giving way to the final (credited) track on the album ‘it’s all gone’ which offers up a creepy bass drone supplemented by an echoing sound that recalls nothing so more as the tense pressure scenes of Das boot. An extra, ‘hidden’ track proves to be singularly unpleasant and therefore the perfect ending to this colossal album.
This is an excellent album. However, such a comment should probably be quantified by adding this is an excellent album of its genre. While many different types of music can attain crossover appeal, blackened drone such as this is never going to appeal beyond its borders because it is, by its very nature, inaccessible. Fans of Sunn 0))) or bass communion will certainly have an idea what to expect here and, if you like either of those bands then you’d be well advise to give this a listen. Equally fans of black metal’s darkest progenitors will find much to admire in the dense misanthropy of this album, but it is not an album to approach lightly or ill-advisedly. For those who do care for music such as this, you will find Theologian to be an expansive, intelligent work of art that challenges and terrifies in equal measure. The effort that was expended upon this work has clearly paid off because this truly is an astonishing piece that encourages and stimulates the imagination as much as it provides entertainment. A brave, dense step into the blackened abyss of the unknown this is a remarkable record.
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