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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