Babalon's Bands III- Temples to Typhon (Thy Darkened Shade)
It is a bizarre and difficult time in which we find ourselves. Wherein free speech is under attack by people who desire human rights, sex is more liberal than ever and yet less commonplace, the freedom to own guns is seen as more important than the freedom to not get shot and worst of all, people like me have more efficient ways than ever to spam you with our opinions...not that I would... LISTEN TO THY DARKENED SHADE YOU BASTARD. Me? I would never do such a thing. A thing such as telling you to LISTEN TO THY DARKENED SHADE.
My shitty jokes aside, Thy Darkened Shade is a wildly imaginative black metal duo from Athens. What do I mean by wildly imaginative? Well, they have been squeezing about a world and a half of sophistication, memorable guitars and "this on paper doesn't work but they made it work" into an LP every half a decade or so. Much like Varg Vikernes being granted temporary leave in 2003 and going on the run, Thy Darkened Shade make their releases count.
Their debut, released a short, breezy thirteen years after their formation, is "Eternvs Mos, Nex Ritvs." It is a sharp, fast and unyielding record. It is also by far and wide the thrashiest of their three albums. While "Eternvs..." is by no means "punky," it also doesn't have that rumbling weight that their later releases have. It flirts more closely with Nifelheim and Gospel of the Horns than it does Morbid Angel or Blasphemy. However I am loathe to call it black thrash, in the same I am loathe to put a / or a "blackened" anywhere when talking about Thy Darkened Shade. Because it really isn't. The soul of this perverse genre is stretched in every which direction but it feels like black metal.
Even in their later records, the band goes from Chuck Schuldiner and Jon Nodtveïdt style complexities to borderline Slayer and Harmony Corruption era Napalm Death moments in what feels like a snap. 2014's Liber Lvcifer I: Khem Sedjet is an absolute masterclass in not letting tags bother you. Choruses straight out of Enslaved, leads like a somewhat less melodic Nodtveïdt, and grueling Pete Sandoval era Morbid Angel drums, sounds like a mess on paper - in practice the band pulls it off admirably.
It would be another nine short years before the band would continue that particular liber but in the interregnum the band released a bunch of splits. Depending on your tastes you might be more or less excited about the other bands. I'm not going to delve into all of them but my personal favorite is "SAATET- TA APEP" with Chaos Invocation. On top of having what is one of Karmazid's best and most yellow artworks, both bands bring their A-game and compliment each other well. In a world where Nile exists and metal bands have been digging through Egypt like I dig through graveyards for romantic partners, it is hard to stand out. But both Thy Darkened Shade and Chaos Invocation do it, firstly by bringing across a wildly different interpretation to most of what’s out there and second by bringing across wildly different interpretations to each other. They’re both black metal songs but Thy Darkened Shade focuses on the grandeur and elaborate nature of Egyptian mythology, while Chaos Invocation is more detail oriented and emotional.
That brings us to 2023 AD. A mysterious place where dreams come to die. However not all of them because nearly a decade after the first volume, Thy Darkened Shade opened this year swinging with "Liber Lvcifer II: Mahapralaya." I don't want to spoil the surprise, but Liber Lvcifer II took the 9 years of anticipation and expectations and delivered. The death metal edge is more pronounced in this one, the vocals are more varied and better preformed than ever, and the bass is so good that it makes me wish other black metal bands would put in half this effort into their bass arsenal. As for specifics, sorry Charlie, you’re going to have to go check it out yourself. It’s well worth the time investment.
Unsolicited Recommendations 5
(Insert a charming opening paragraph with some vague and bland best wishes, followed up with some joke here. Then say the division today is into an album and a series of books. )
Batzorig Vaanchig’s The Great Chinggis Khan
As anyone who know me can attest, I have had a strong and long standing fascination with Mongolian culture. I have a tattoo of "khan" in Mongolian Bichig (Тод Бициг) script an my hand, and I've occasionally used both Mongol terms and Bichig script in my own art. But let's take a step back, do you know that meme with the Mongolian musician playing the horse head fiddle (морин хуур) on a mountainside? Wearing a traditional, green Mongolian robe ( дззл)?
That man is Batzorig Vaanchig. With the rise of popularity and interest in Mongolian Folk and traditional music, Batzorig Vaanchig cannot and will not go unmentioned. He is, beyond the meme, perhaps the greatest and most famous modern musician in the genre.
If you roll on back to the prehistoric year known to scholars as 2015, before The Hu exploded in popularity (much love to them too,) there were a select few places you could go for full albums of real Mongolian steppe music. In the west, the list for many years basically began and ended in Steppenwolf. But joke references to Hard Rock aside, the list basically began and was headed by Khusgutun and Batzorig Vaanchig.
While the two Khusugtun albums (a self titled debut and Jengar) are my personal favorites in the genre, I believe the accessibility of his new solo record makes for an ideal starting point. Honestly you can't go wrong with any of the three, but if you're new, start here. Savor it, because his voice is one of a kind.
Stephen Fry's Mythos, Heroes and Troy
Being a huge Greek Mythology fan and philhellene myself, I like to dig into every aspect of the old books. There isn't a great many of them, and while they're almost infinitely re-readable, there's a point where you start humming along. But many people tell me they can't pick up an unabridged copy of Theogony, the Iliad, or the Odyssey without getting lost. Between references, customs in Ancient Greece and blurry lines between what is history and what is myth, it can get massively overwhelming.
I broke my head against the wall until I got it. However if you'd rather not be a nerd and spend your days hitting on ladies and making money rather than pondering the ineffable will of Zeus, Stephen Fry has you covered. From cultural significances to fun tidbits and references, Stephen Fry retells and explains the stories in a charming and compelling way.
Id like to stress that it is not and is not intended to be a substitute to reading the originals. Whether we're talking about the Iliad, the Argonautica or Theogony, there's a great deal that is conveyed beyond the storyline. However, Stephen Fry is an excellent Vergil to your Dante as you make your way through.
Unsolicited Recommendations 4
After an undeserved yet still taken break, I have got some more unsolicited recommendations for all of you good boys and girls. If Santa gave you coal, you're hereby invited to stop reading. Santa is the great moral arbiter of our time. The Greeks had Themis, the Romans had Justitia, the Egyptians had Maat and Anubis, the Hindus have Durga, and we, we have Santa. Anyway, rambling aside, here come the recommendations.
Crone- Gotta Light?
Being informed Secrets of the Moon would stop existing after Party-San, I was both saddened and somewhat unsurprised. The change from Black-Extreme Metal to Gothic Rock with some Black Metal leanings was so drastic that their 2015 and onwards crowd and their 1995 crowd were almost completely unrelated. I personally adore both sides of the equation, but I think the name represented an entity that has functionally stopped existing a couple of years ago already.
That being said, I made sure not to take my eyes off sG (Philipp Jonas) and his other band-turned-main band, Crone. Their 2022 album, eventually entitled "Gotta Light?", would be, for better or worse, massively influential on the band's future. Oh well, good thing that it's an awesome and deeply confrontational album then.
Good thing indeed. While Crone existed since 2011 and have undoubtedly already found their footing, "Gotta Light?" is their best album so far. It might have the word light in the title, but don't let that fool you- it's more fucking depressing than getting shot on your birthday. In the rain. By Jonas Renske of Katatonia. sG's mournful, almost lost, vocals and the band's drift from cleaner guitar and piano sections to darker, more distorted pathways make this album feel like a journey. The light, for all its brightness, feels like dawn after a flood.
2. HBO's Rome
Before Game of Thrones, how could you get that sweet "violence in movies and sex on TV" all in one place? That's right by putting a movie screen and a TV screen and doing some scandalous shit in the room. But barring that, you had one of HBO's best shows, Rome.
While I'm not disputing the quality of HBO's recent releases, I think Rome's age and relatively short run has people sleeping on it and that's a shame. A more lively and vivid depiction of the Julius- Augustus period would be hard to come by. The cast has that LOTR quality that while you probably haven't heard of them, (I sure didn't,) you cannot easily mentally dissociate them from their roles here. Ciarán Hinds, Irish actor and man I was genuinely surprised to find out isn't Alfred Molina, is still, after 15 years, the face of Julius Caeser in my mind
The dynamic of moving between the legendary figures and the populous lets the show tell interesting stories on both the macro and the micro levels. An episode or two in, the stories of Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) become just as interesting as the bigger historical events on display.
The only drawback is that the show was discontinued after two seasons because it was super expensive to make, but while it lasted it was glorious.
Babalon’s Bands II- Forever Possessed (Celestial Bloodshed)
So it seems that wherever you go today, you hear about Nidrosian black metal. As long as "wherever" is in niche metal territory, and of that territory, in niche black metal territory. But for once, the hype is extremely justified. Nidaros (or modernly, Trondheim,) has been home to one exciting (in the dark, gloomy and abrasive black metal way) band after another.
While the other scenes in Norway have by no means stopped producing quality Weltschmerz, the Nidrosian scene has produced a stripped down, dark sound all of its own. We can attribute this uptick to Terratvr Possessions and the magical capacity of Ole Aune for finding the most combative and abrasive acts and bringing them to the forefront, but we have to attribute a good deal of it to Steingrim "Mehimoloth" Torson and Celestial Bloodshed.
Setting up shop at the turn of the millennium, Celestial Bloodshed had a nine year run that was deeply influential to say the least. The dark, unwieldy and almost raucous atmosphere, influenced by the likes of old Impaled Nazerene,is evident from the very beginning, the Mitt Rike demo. But if you go look it up, you'll hear immediately that it's not quite the same bag of chips. Whereas Impaled Nazerene can be said to be Punk/Black Metal, Celestial Bloodshed just has this loose, less ceremonial aggression that fans of Niklas Kvarforth's Shining will feel at home with.
That isn't to say the band doesn't do big at all, they do but it's a mournful and gritty depths "big" rather than a say, Emperor orchestral majestic "big." This is extremely evident on their first self titled EP, where the takes two tracks and eight minutes to cross realms as diverse as Taake and Shining to Mayhem and even hints of Doom Metal.
For me though, and I imagine for many others, the zenith of Celestial Bloodshed and Mr. Steingrim's work came with the debut, "Cursed, Scarred, and Forever Possessed." It's somewhat hard to describe but the honesty of this record shines through in every moment. It all flows together in a manner which very few band manage, and this flow, this chemistry, is what set apart Celestial Bloodshed as a band. Luctus (who you might be more familiar with as Wraath, guitar and bass) builds these dark landscapes that lay the groundwork for Steingrim's varied and powerful vocals.
Sometimes it comes across as claustrophobic, sometimes it's wide and sprawling, but whatever the sound, Steingrim ties it together into a cohesive whole. The differences between say "Gospel of Hate" and "Truth Is Truth, Beyond the God" are monumental but they come across as a facet of a complex but representatively human album. Human anger, human desperation, human hatred. It touches upon the ethereal, the "celestial" but it never forgets this mortality. Whether it remembers it in loathing or in praise.
Here we take a step back from the work to give a little background as to what happened next in Celestial Blood's story. In order to show the utmost respect to both Steingrim and the surviving members I will do so only with a light tread and with the forewarning that this is how the story was relayed to me. I am not, and don't claim to be a source. On the night of April 30th 2009, Steingrim Torson was hit by an accidental gunshot and sadly passed away. He was only 25 years old at death, and yet he was already a giant.
The band, unwilling to let their comrade's memory go unsung. decided to finish an album of previously recorded materials entitled Ω (Omega.) The album could not be a more fitting sendoff to the man. A grand funeral oration of a record that evolves the band's sound while sounding very much in line with the original vision. The album definitely feels bigger in scope than the debut, more established. If the first was the band hungry, angry, and kicking, this is the band already using that distilled darkness to delve even deeper. Omega is a fitting title, because not only does this album stand at the gates of the abyss, but it explores beyond. The beauty of the beyond, grief, the majesty of time and death, and our relationship with them.
To that end, you'll see and hear some familiar voices lending a hand to celebrate and further empower the man's vision. Hoath Torog (most famously of the venerable Behexen) and Azazil (of Mare, Black Majesty and more) both guest on this record. Wraath (Luctus, most famously of...the list goes on and on but my favorite is One Tail, One Head) also contributes his evil, smokey vocals to the record, whereas he's only accredited for guitar and bass on the debut. Almost everyone from the band's circle made this beast come alive together. Sarath who did backing vocals on Cursed, Scarred and Forever Possessed is producing. They were both recorded at Brygga studios. Tying everything together nicely, the aforementioned Terratvr Possessions, the home of the modern Nidrosian scene, distributed both Ω and physical represses of Cursed, Scarred and Forever Possessed since 2012.
Look, as the saying goes "victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is ever an orphan" and the Nidrosian scene is a very victorious offspring. While many have some parentage of it, Steingrim Torson is definitely one of the strongest claimants to its fatherhood.
R.I.P, you legend, R.I.P