lørdag den 27. april 2019

Empty Chalice - Mother Destruction




A new physical Compact Disc digipack album with Empty Chalice is on its way, limited to 100 copies and is released and distributed by Italian-based label Toten Schwan Records. 

Empty Chalice is no stranger to Kalteldur (or me). Having made a huge and positive impact with the strained and sorrow-filled dark-ambient ritualistic masterpiece Emerging Is Submerging album (see/read the former review and link below!) I was kind of hyped to check up what this act has come up with.

The album follows in the same vein of haunted ruins of gothic-cathedrals like the previous album, which is a good thing because.... it is a good thing/idea (Empty Chalice does this thing REALLY good!). Let me try to explain!  

Unholy Light being the first track of the album welcomes the listener into mystical and ancient Orthodox-based ritual rites. The sound and mood are just right in the eye. Ritualistic gentle tappings on an esoteric metal-based instrument (a bit like How to Destroy Angels with Coil), ghostly drones waves in and out and caressed your mind while hidden and strained melodies lurk in the shadows. It sounds like something from the very best era of Swedish Raison d´être with a touch of Brian Eno, and there is nothing wrong about that!. Everything works in perfection with the first track.

The second track called Treblinka Snow, being a more ... mysterious and eerie piece. Treblinka, a concentration camp will, of course, pop up into the mind. A track with also... a more melodic approach with female spoken words/lyrics attached to it. Why I am thinking of neo-folk pop act Rome here, I don´t know why. A dark-ambient version of Rome done by Swedish Coph Nia maybe? The whole track feels like a black hole sucking away life dry as we know it, same thing with the concentration camps. A very heavy-ambient atmospheric track (which should/could have been longer, I think they could do a long 1-track mini-album out of this one excellent track!). 

Third track Rest In Pain... suicidal drone-doom anyone. Traces of guitar/bass-string instruments here and there and real looped drums slowed down to a crawling tempo. Scary human-voices trying to push a melodramatic mood into place, it sounds cool because it sounds like if the voices (which have been recorded) were pushed into the farthest end of the corridor and were just left there to do the vocal parts. Acoustic guitar parts take over from there and let the listener feel a touch of loneliness... the kind of loneliness when everyone is gone (or dead!). Icy drones keep on looping here to lull you in a melancholic trance. 


Fourth track has a very strange and esoteric title (Qua Resurgent Ex Favilla). The most occult-like atmospheric one and it has that... funeral ambient feels to it as well. Funeral thing like... something being finally at peace? A very pleasant dark and romantic piece I think. Excellent evocative and archaic religious-sounding vocal parts are done here. A very spiritual one... might just be my favorite piece on this album. 

The last lamb to the slaughter on this album is simply called Mother Destruction (like the album!). Sound of a hissing gramophone sound looping, endless and beautiful ambient voids, undercurrents of synth-based melodies. The track made me think of my father (R.I.P), he always used to say that after Dresden was bombed in WW2 you could practically stand on a beer crate and watch over the entire town! That is exactly the feeling you get with this track, it feels completely empty with tiny human traces here and there!. And yes, I do mean it in a good way!.

A fantastic album with a fantastic depth attached to it. A unique dark ambient album with real instruments, and vocals as well. A journey through the netherworld (or a parallel universe), meeting ghosts/dead-people, existing/caught in a static loop between life and death! My god... This album does give you that!. Go and give it a thorough listen!. Now, we just gonna have to wait till the physical release is out.


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søndag den 7. april 2019

Mörka Skogens Vindar - S/T



Olof S Redig (Fåntratt, Rymdborg, Erdig) has started a new dungeon synth inspired track called Mørka Skogens Vindar (Dark Forrest Winds). A quicky sold-out debut cassette release, but still available for anyone on by digital means on Bandcamp

4 tracks, 30 minutes. All revolving around a cold and dark forest-theme, the very kind people get lost in and end up freezing to certain doom. Not a totally gloomy uncharming forest, but the sort with a certain... magically beauty. Sparkling and glittering snowy frost here and there, breathtaking white mountains, ethereal kind of fog, mesmerizing winter silence... And at that point, you are probably already lost! The whole album has that... it sucks you in and keeps you there kind-of-feel. You have an allowance to enter this secret world, and once you are in there ... you don´t really want to leave. So yes, we are talking about an enchanted but beautiful forest filled with dryads, elves, gnomes, etc etc. Small´ish magical creatures with pointed ears reader to either charm you or throw a bloody curse on you!


It is a wonderful place to explore, the entire album brings your very favorite peace-of-mind forest right into your own living room. It´s Olof´s slightly folksy psychedelic drone dungeon synth, with a little more attention to back-to-basics ambient music. The album contains those classic Brian Eno moments! (Music for Airports era). Most interesting detail about this release is that he even had help from one of his kids doing improvised stuff on his synth. It gives the album and the sound a certain nostalgic charm, very unique!. So what are you waiting for, grab and read your favorite Nordic fairy tale story and have this running in the background!. 


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torsdag den 4. april 2019

HgM - Iridium 192


Obscure field-recording/industrial-noised based project from Portugal, been churning out toxic harshness since 2013. Been active through labels like Cranial Fracture, Big Pharma Records and also through its own label Ho.Gravi.Malattie. This release came out on CD-R through HgM directly and also on cassette (30 copies) via another Portugal-based label called OTA (see link below!). Released back in January 2018. 5 tracks, 25 minutes. So we are dealing with an EP/Mini-album.

It´s a lovely back-to-basics experimental industrial-noise treat. Very drone-based, looped and cold distorted sounds, hypnotic suggestions with almost heavy post-rock´ish psychedelic-textures at some tracks. First track Kill Blast Furnace has that lovely primitive and harsh sound-quality, kind of early death-industrial with atmospheric noise-drones. Signal Steel Explosions welcomes the listener with that old modem sound (the ones we used to get on the Internet back in the day!). This track kind of takes of where the first track ended. Some of the same sound-elements and samples are used, but they are used in a way which makes the track sound like a new one (or just a good and decent continuation of the first track).


Third track Cardio Nickel Alloy puts the listener in the bowels of a deep mine, while monotonic loud machines are churning through the mine. Sounds like screaming rusty machines falling apart literally. Oxygen Gas Fusion is something very interesting for the ambient/soundtrack geeks. Ghost-like whispering, droning and deep echoed human-voices, eerie reversed recordings. Like being trapped somewhere as a ghost between heaven and hell? Very nice!. Last offering Iridium 192 goes further into soundtrack ambiance, almost esoteric ritualistic in nature. Post-rock´ish texture are present here, being fused/mixed together with classic industrial ritualisms like Controlled Bleeding and Nocturnal Emissions. Also very good!. 

A delightful (and interesting) journey through blast furnaces, steel explosions, gas fusions and ending up chilled ritual-moods. If this release was meant to work as a soundtrack from the beginning and to the end, I would say that it has succeeded (VERY MUCH!). Absolutely no reason why you should check this one out!. 


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onsdag den 3. april 2019

Lá Ùltima Mirada



Something new and something unknown has just been released from Spanish Marbre Negre. No one yet has proclaimed being the creator/creators behind this mysterious release. It´s a dark cassette cover showing the known and fiendish visage of child molester Albert Fish, with a sort of mystical free-masonry´ish esoteric symbol on his forehead. It comes in two limited cassette editions. One that comes in a cardboard box with inserts and download codes, plus having professionally engraved Chromo cassettes. The other being the cassette, without the cardboard box, etc. It´s a two-track release with almost 60 minutes of pure hellish delight.


Brutal atmospheric ambiance, cold ritualistic undercurrents, merciless noise-scapes at the same time! Sounds like a recording from a pure imaginative hell, but don´t go away!. This stuff is very interesting! Being multilayered, and having sounds that switch from one speaker to the other. Soundwise it is VERY decent made, sounds even professional (if you ask me). Not just another cellar harsh-noise treatment with a kid trying (by desperate means) to scratch a knife into a microphone, while jumping on a 1000 guitar-pedals. A lot of brain-power has been put into use for this one, and I suggest that the listener should open their ears widely and let the mind absorb the hellish (but also delightful) heavy and expressive soundscapes. 

I am not sure what the album means, other than being something about Mirada being the very last one. Albert Fish hasn´t had a Mirada on his victims-list, so... who knows?? The track titles are also just called track A and B.

Either way, a release worth anyone´s attention. For fans of MZ.412, Whitehouse and Zoloft Evra. 


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