Bleak times call for even bleaker albums….and by hell, there have been a lot of them. Whether it be dissonant, angry, apathetic, escapist, lunatic or a combination of all of the above, they keep coming. Black metal is a great friend to the bleakest outlook on life as it offers the saddest of soundscapes, the most frenetically uneasy rhythms and the extremities that are built through caustic, desperate vocals. The age-old concepts of ‘harrowing’ and ‘existence’ are carried around by black metal like a sweaty little double sided business card.
It’s without any great surprise that those within the purest of black metal genres have felt the need to toss Fenriz’s chord book to one side and venture forth into slightly more experimental territories, and it’s without even less of a greater surprise that there are those who have, successfully, taken black metal and turned it into something completely abstract and equally alluring…enter Imperial Triumphant.
And now, qasu, this mysterious project from both sides of the pond, have entered with, what they call, ‘Ancient Future Black Metal’. This is incohesive, counterintuitive and anti-black metal, and to send even the weekend black metal fan scuttling for their sword, contains a track with overtly pop-like, auto-tuned vocals. Sleep Token, even you can sleep this one out.
Greeted with an album cover that looks like an advert for a safari holiday, pressing play is a risky affair. Confronted with ‘The Bitter Waters of the Abyssal Sea’ and ‘Jewels Where The Eyes Once Were’, you quickly realise this is a lo-fi version of the sort of cosmic, avant-garde, deeply transcendental (and well-produced) brand of progressive black/death metal that bands like The Ruins of Beverast and Blood Incantation (for example) have been producing for some years.
Whilst this is clearly early Mayhem doing late avant-garde black metal, the addition of dramatically auto-tuned vocals on ‘Death Dreams’ is a choice that cannot be ignored. For me, it felt forced and deliberately provocative, others may feel otherwise. It adds to the sense that you are under the impression qasu feel they are pushing boundaries, but they are boundaries that have long been pushed.
That is not to say that this isn’t a highly enjoyable record – because it is – and tracks like ‘Faith in Violence’ and ‘The Long Knives of the King’ are as unsettling as they are deeply immersive – in particular the latter with its dissonant, mathy synth lines. There is no question as to whether this pushes boundaries – it does, and some in a good way, but there are other instances where qasu, maybe questionably, use the age old philosophy of degradation, chaos and ludicrous experimentation to attempt to prove a point that has, potentially, been made, or more purposefully not made, a few times before.
Best Paired With: A psychotherapist, hemlock and a night down the Travelodge.
Reviewed by Jaff.
qasu – A Bleak King Cometh is out now on Phantom Limb/Apocalyptic Witchcraft
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