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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Nordgeist — Frostwinter (Kunsthall Produktionen)

Photo by Eugen Kohl

Frostwinter by Nordgeist

Siberian black metal? What could be more inevitable, and more fated to forlorn, frosty despair? Black metal surely seems a suitable sort of music to come from Bratsk, a city of over 200,000 souls located on the Angara River, to the north of the ancient, abyssal and massive Lake Baikal. Bratsk is remote, 450 miles from the nearest metropolis of Krasnoyarsk, which Chekov called “the most beautiful city in Siberia.” Ambivalent praise, that — but no one would call Bratsk beautiful. It’s home to massive aluminum smelting and pulping operations and a mercury-loaded reservoir that in 2006 landed Bratsk on the Blacksmith Institute’s “Dirty Thirty,” a list of the most polluted cities on the planet. Frigidly cold, full of industrial clangor and poison: Bratsk itself is sort of like a black metal song.

Little wonder, then, that a woman identified only as T has responded to life in Bratsk with Frostwinter, a debut LP of chilling power. Long compositions dominate the record; the shortest of its four tracks clocks in at nearly twelve minutes. The songs conjure long, sub-Arctic nights, serious winds off the Angara, shards of frozen minerals razoring through the air. T’s sense of texture is one of Nordgeist’s most emphatic strengths. She builds thick soundscapes out of black metal’s conventional resources: blasts, shrieking voices, a hint of moaning synths and a crush of tremolo-picked guitars. Kvlty materials, to be sure, and a fairly kvlty production, which sounds rougher and more ragged than refined. But T mobilizes those familiar tonal qualities of black metal, and with them constructs a compelling and idiosyncratic sonic environment. It’s a sound, and it’s a space.

The second half of Frostwinter (comprising two tracks, “Revenge” and “Sorrow”) is especially dense. The songs progress through specific movements and moods, most of which could be called atmospheric—but with little of the melodic pleasure frequently associated with atmospheric black metal. T’s layering of riffs and fricative guitar tones creates a relentless, proliferative vibe. The songs expand and envelope you. The final four minutes of “Revenge” and the entirety of “Sorrow” constitute a continuous build, up a blizzard-struck peak of rock, into freezing, frightening whiteout. It’s sublime.

That sense of continuous build doesn’t discount the effects of the ambient interstitial sections, which fill the seconds between songs with sounds of withering wind and the crunch of footfalls through a crust of ice. On other records, those gestures might feel artificial, field recordings that ultimately separate the studio-bound music from the field itself. Frostwinter uses them as binding materials that join song to song, and music to space. Ending the record with a track titled “Sorrow” might seem to guide that binding process to a pretty dismal place. It’s music made in Bratsk, full of smoldering cinders and ash, bone-shattering cold. The unrelenting sound of “Sorrow” closes in around you, replicating the grip of an inhospitable lifeworld, of rapacious industry and pitiless nature. Somehow “Sorrow” ends up creating a magisterial affect, a spirit that electrifies even as it enervates. It’s really good music. One hopes that T withstand the demands of life in Bratsk long enough to give the world more songs of this strong a caliber.

Jonathan Shaw

#nordgeist #frostwinter #kunsthall produktionen #jonathan shaw #albumreview #dusted magazine #metal #black metal #siberia

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metalindex-hu · 3 years

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Fémjelzés – a hét újdonságai (2021. április 19-25.)

Fémjelzés – a hét újdonságai (2021. április 19-25.) - https://metalindex.hu/2021/04/25/femjelzes-a-het-ujdonsagai-2021-aprilis-19-25/ -

Hatalmas kínálattal jelentkezik a Fémjelzés e heti gyűjteménye. 130 lemez közül kell kihalásznia mindenkinek a maga gyöngyszemeit.

1968 – Salvation If You Need (stoner metal) Aeon of Eternal – The Wanderer (atmoszferikus doom/death metal) Akiavel – Væ Victis (melodikus death metal) All Is Ashes – What Comes Next (melodikus death/groove metal) Alsion – The Darkest Hour (power metal) Altarage – Succumb (black/death metal) Aphonic Threnody – The All Consuming Void (funeral doom/death metal) Archemoron – Flagellum I (black metal) ARNA – Dragged to a Lunar Grave (black metal) Ashen Earth – Oceans Above (death metal) Autumn, Leaves, Scars – Unter dem Füße der trauerd Winde (post-rock/black metal) Autumnfall – Ghosts of Light (melodikus black metal) Avenguard – War Never Changes (power metal) Axedra – Mass Deception (death metal) Batholith – Alpine Tomb (death/doom metal) Bitter the Pale – The Nature of Grief (black/funeral doom metal) Black Locvst – Forest (atmoszferikus black/death metal) Blacnk – Sighs from the Halls of Torment (black metal) Bodom After Midnight – Paint the Sky with Blood (EP) (melodikus death/power metal) Body Void – Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth (sludge/drone/doom metal) Bongzilla – Weedsconsin (sludge/doom/stoner metal) Born from Pain – Don’t Make Plans for Sunday (black metal/ambient) Capella – Outside World (progresszív melodikus power metal) Cheat Engine – Pandemica (thrash metal) Cicada the Burrower – Corpseflower (progresszív/post-black metal) Cold Cell – The Greater Evil (black metal) Conciner – Social Disorder (death/thrash metal) Conclave – Dawn of Days (stoner/sludge metal) Crypts of Despair – All Light Swallowed (death metal) Dead World Reclamation – Aura of Iniquity (technikás death metal/deathcore) Death Shroud – Death, Slavery and the Pursuit ov Sadness (black metal) Demonized Priest – Necromantic Rituals (speed/black metal) Desolate Realm – Desolate Realm (heavy/doom metal) Drakenborg – Darkness of Light (melodikus black metal) Dumuzi – Salute the Ashes (black/doom metal) Dusk in Silence – Beneath the Great Sky of Solitude (atmoszferikus post-black metal) Dyoxidon – Exo-Spectrum (industrial black/death metal) Elffor – Condemned to Wander (epikus black metal/ambient/dungeon synth) Endless Voyage X – Terminal Rust (doom/black metal) Exsim – Entre Máquinas (grindcore/sludge/thrash metal) Feanor – Power of the Chosen One (heavy metal) Fenris Vrede – Viking (melodikus death/folk metal) FireWing – Resurrection (szimfonikus power metal) Frog Mallet – Dissection by Amphibian (brutális death metal) Frozen Crown – Winterbane (power metal) Funeral Demon – Cursed Cycle of Ghastly Futility (depresszív black metal) Genune – Inert & Unerring (black metal) Grota Pramocy – Ascendentes Metaphysicum (doom/black metal) Haunter – Silent Earth (heavy/power metal) Heidenbach – Хайденбахъ (Heidenbach) (folk/black metal) Hekatomb – The Signs (heavy metal/hard rock) Helgast – Tentacled Divinity (death metal) Hellfire – Madman (thrash/black metal) Helslave – From the Sulphur Depths (death metal) Holykillers – Squalor (melodikus death metal/metalcore) House by the Cemetary – Rise of the Rotten (death metal) Hrad Vallis – NWOMDM (stoner/doom metal) Hymnr – Far Beyond Insanity (black metal) Jevo – Todo mal (power metal) Kaltesblut – The Lost Art of Twilight (black metal) Kaltesgrab – Unschuldiger Tod (nyers black metal) Kartoum – Maelstrom (doom/sludge metal) Kong Lives – Thy Kingdom Kong (stoner/doom/post-metal) Könnygáz – Könnygáz (EP) (death metal) Krabathor – Demonizer / Mortal Memories II (death metal) Lankester Merrin – Upon the Forgotten (melodikus heavy metal) Lunacy – Obscure Introspection (heavy metal) Malformity – Monumental Ruin (death metal) Meshum – Enigmatic Existential Essence (brutális death metal) Miasma Theory – Miasma Theory (heavy/doom metal) Minas Morgul – Heimkehr (pogány black metal) Morrigu – In Turbulence (melodikus metalcore) Morticula Rex – Autumnal Rites (death/doom metal) My Refuge – The Anger Is Never Over (heavy metal) Necralant – Temples of Ruin (black metal) Necro Weasel – Another Day to Waste 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metal) Soulglass – Odeth (szimfonikus/melodikus death metal) Spacebag Poopsock – Spacebag Poopsock (stoner/doom metal) Spectral Lore – Ετερόφωτος (atmoszferikus black metal, ambient) Stac Pollaidh – Largiebaan (atmoszferikus black metal) Sterbefall – Verlorene Zeit (post-black/doom metal) Stone Gnome – The Algorhythm (stoner/sludge metal/rock) Stone Horns – Rise of Apophis (groove metal) Stygian Fair – Equilibrium (heavy metal/hard rock) Suicide Forest – You Loney Death from Under Sweet Sky (depresszív black metal) Sutura – Dawn of Cursed Souls (death/black metal) Sylvatica – Ashes and Snow (melodikus death/folk metal) The Cauldron of Darkness – Genesis (avantgárd blackened doom metal) The Marred – Temple of Greed (doom/stoner metal) The Overthrone – Bloodmoon (melodikus death metal) The Sheglapes – Seiren (power metal) This Noose… My Neck… – Funeral Preparation (funeral doom metal) Thy Rites – Nekrolatreia (death/black metal) Tideless – Adrift in Grief (death/doom metal/shoegaze) 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#Hírek

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