This album, Valefor’s second full length, has been out a while, but as is the way with things it has only just made its way through the Ave Noctum gates. Being as it’s a one man Turkish depressive black metal band that has made the arduous journey via Japan it would seem churlish not to review it.
A nice and traditional black and white cover leads us into some slow picked guitar swathed in keyboards and piano; a short, melancholy piece ‘In The Emptiness’ nicely picked out, gently presented. Promising beginning. ‘Journey To Obscurities’ introduces the slow buzzing guitar which is a very early nineties in style; think Daemonia/Ahkenaton or early Mortiis. Simple tunes, short phrasing looped to build the atmosphere. Then the vocals come in and they are genuinely extraordinary: The only way I can possibly describe these tortured tones is like a screaming baby spliced to the sound of a chainsaw. That may have made you smile but the effect, especially when they trail off into a recognisable half sob, is truly disturbing. The downside of the song is a guitar melody that I think is supposed to be a discordant counter point to the buzzing riff but unfortunately here it merely sounds out of tune.
‘Mental Collapse’ manages the melody much better and flows readily into a Burzum-esque dimension, once more lengthy passages of repetition of musical phrases with the occasional twist of a new melody. The production is a little too flat, the depth needed in the bass and the layering not fully realised which pulls some of the atmosphere but as this is clearly a low budget recording it is acceptable and not ruinous.
There is, for all the sometimes slightly clumsy phrasing, a real charm to Valefor. Sometimes it reminds me of a less drum powered, simpler Exiled From Light. When the almost spoken vocals appear on ‘The Torment Of The Grave’ the effect, despite some very basic recording, is magnetic. It is a lonely place that Valefor create, a grey and dismal one. It takes its steady steps seriously, one after the other, undeterred by whatever happens in the world outside. Somehow I find beauty in this determination, and more than a little to admire in the art.
This isn’t for everyone. There are pinches of naivety sometimes yes and the album is a bit overlong. You have to accept the shortcomings of the slightly flat mix and the lo-fi production (though the drums come through surprisingly well apart from the bass on ‘A Paranoiac Dreama), and you have to be able to find beauty in the trance like determination of these repeated musical phrases stretched out over seven, eight, nine minutes. You have to have at least a basic love for the whole depressive/suicidal one man black metal genre. But if you have that then Valefor are not just worthy of your time but will wrap you in dark cloaks and set you adrift.
Valefor took me to a quiet, sombre place and, honestly, I don’t regret going there one bit. At times genuinely beautiful.
(7/10 Gizmo)
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