Once upon a time … as ever with Carach Angren, stories are being told but they’re unlikely to find themselves on children’s television. In the past we’ve had shipwrecks and curses, and the horrors of the Second World War. We’re now concentrating on witchcraft.
As ever nothing is too extreme. Tales of suffering and violent death are presented to us theatrically and extravagantly in the cloak of urgent and rushing symphonic black metal, which surpasses the boundaries of insanity. Such is the maelstrom that the sea is constantly raging and stormy … oh, that was the theme of a previous album but never has a band surrounded its listeners with such turbulence as Carach Angren.
Whether it’s ships or something else, it’s permanent wreckage. As the violence and mayhem erupt with only the briefest but still corpse-laden respite, the vocalist come narrator tells his dramatic and grisly tale with pronounced exaggeration. Epic and always theatrical, it makes me laugh as such extremity is hard to take seriously. From the dark, shadowy and symphonically frantic images of “Once Upon a Time”, “There’s No Place Like Home” explodes in thunderous fury. Violence … violence …. violence” is whispered. Violence is the watchword. It’s also pure theatre. Drums roll and black symphonic waves rise as the frantic horror story continues.
“Two Flies Flew into a Black Sugar Cobweb” builds up to bursting point and climax in a pure spirit of horror and ghoulishness, as the story is told of two children escaping through the woods from their house where their mother has committed suicide. But it’s not an escape to anything better, just a rusty slide, a terrible stench and a strange man. The vocalist sets the scene vividly: “His face seemed friendly but also kind of sick”. To follow there are mutterings of “twisted shades of the dead”. “Dreaming of a Nightmare in Eden” is perfect territory for Carach Angren just as crematoriums are to undertakers. This particular nightmare takes us through stomach upsets, huge festering ulcers, horrible screams and maggots and snakes, culminating in the declaration that “I will eat your lifeless flesh still warm”. The urgency, violence and discomfort are unabating. “Possessed by a Craft of Witchery” features crashing worlds, serial killers, witches and a mutilated child. This dramatic tale takes grisly turn after grisly turn amid rip-roaring instrumentals, only slowing down to emphasise a point and extract more horror. The atmosphere is one of foreboding as the picture builds up. Swirling turbulence, crashing drums and symphonic mayhem dominate right through to the final track “Tragedy Ever After’. The storm only dies down at the very end of this breathless journey. “Tragedy Ever After” brings the curtains down with a haunting sound and symphonic melancholy. “The nightmare continues in reality”, we are told. Yes, it’s a nightmare but Carach Angren have done a fine job in representing it and it’s a very entertaining one.
In structure, if that’s the right word for such a tumultuous offering of heavy instruments and symphonic screechings, devotees of Carach Angren will know what to expect. As always there are great lines and climaxes in all this violent excess. I have to say though that I preferred “Lammendam” (2008) and “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” (2012). Their theme was more apparent to me, making these albums more vivid. But here again the force and the feverish imagination of “This is No Fairytale” swept me along. It may be no fairytale but this is another great album from Carach Angren, who prove that they are unique.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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