Misa Tridente / Lacrimi Si Sfinti / Inselberg - The Pact
We get to review another release from French-based Cioran Records. A sort of compilation featuring 3 acts, or could we call it a threesome-based concept album? Misa Tridente is from Spain, Lacrimi Si Sfinti is also from Spain, and Inselberg is from France. Two first acts have also been released on the Spanish label Marbre Negre, I have also had the pleasure of reviewing Lacrimi Si Sfinti some years ago. All three acts work within the fields of ritual and experimental dark ambient music.
Again, I love the artwork made by Cioran Records. The album comes as a beautiful DVD-sized 6-paneled digipack. Front-cover artwork, think it shows hell in some way? Kind of a collage, gripping hands reaching out for help, and some confused naked humans trying... to find a way out of the place. The ground itself looks kind of organic. Really love the artwork here, always a good thing to look at while listening to the album.
The first act on the CD is Misa Tridente with the track called In Béllùm. Tried doing some research regarding the mysterious title of the track, but couldn't find much... other than it meant Into Battle. A cave-kind of reverbed soundscape greets the listener with some additional shimmering bells, and some kind of moaning drones... almost resampling a human voice. A dominating Diamanda Galás kind of vocal punctuates the silence, love the extra echoed layers put into the voice. There is a creepy kind of... sound in there as well? Sounds a bit like... some sort of alarm... or the kind found in Throbbing Gristle´s Hamburger Lady or Leather Nun´s Slow Death? Later on, we have a distorted vocal added, male-sounding if you ask me. Some evocative synth is added, and some kind of string works as well. It´s all a VERY dark, beautiful, and ritualistic piece, offering a really intense moment worth listening to. The sound of it is absolutely superb! Fans of Aghast and MZ.412 should definitely check this out for sure! Can´t help to think back to Stuart Gordan´s H.P Lovecraft movie Dagon, where a female deep-one/human-hybrid evokes a Cthulhu rite in Spanish while sacrificing a human female to their Great Old One named Dagon. Dagon would then impregnate her offcourse... anyways!
Next track is by Lacrimi Si Sfinti, called Miserere. Probably something about... misery. A humming and constant sound of 100 frozen strings, and yes... we are still in the bowels of a deep underground cave. Painful and torturous violin strings are in the background, while the intensity of horrific ambient soundscapes slowly turns up the volume. Organ/wind-driven sounds are added, such as hypnotic vocal chanting, and a really hellish recording of glass shards being driven into the strings of an electrified harp! A mixture of ritual ambiance and improvised harsh-noise aesthetics. Plenty of misery here so far! Sounds like Tibetan monks in hell. Incredible evocative, and what an atmosphere!
The third and last track by Inselberg is called Sparsum Cruorem Posibus Vastator Horret Angelis *takes a deep breather*. Roughly translated on Google Translator as The Angel Is Horrified By The Scattered Blood Of The Posts Of The Devastator. A gothic horror introduction of someone ( I think! ) trying to pry open a coffin with the church bells going on in the background. The sound of splintering wood is quite an ear-candy thing here! The slow-downed sound of a priest mesmerizing his words for the funeral rite, is the sound of wood just the sound of wood being pressured by the sheer weight of the soil? Not sure, the whole thing is incredibly beautiful sounding. More driven towards angelic ambient moods here, than hellish here. Not trying to sound like a boy-scout here, but so far my favorite track is this one. Kind of a trip back to Brian Eno´s Ambient 4 On Land and Klaus Schulze. It´s just really well-made ambient music, in my experience... making ambient music that just works... is a rare thing. But I know that it´s a matter of taste!
All in all, it IS an incredible concept album with three highly dedicated acts. It took me about, 20 listening to get to the core of it. And I enjoyed it every time I heard it. But to put words on it, was kind of hard. Being quite atmospheric and ambient-based, also being very direct and almost aggressive as well. It´s a complex beast, but a beast everyone can understand after a listen or two. I like it, and would love to hear it again... and again.
Bandcamp (label):
Bandcamp ( Misa Tridente ):
Bandcamp ( Inselberg ):