So obscure is the artwork and sleeve of this album that unless I’d been told in advance, I would have struggled to work out that this is the second album by VIII from Sardinia. The listening experience is entirely different, as VIII take us on this vivid three track journey through stages of decay.
The three tracks are monstrous and substantial. Weighing in at 15, 18 and 16 minutes, “Symptom”, “Diagnosis” and “Prognosis” are at the most simplistic level pieces of extreme black metal. But they are so much more than this, expanding into swathes of blackness and developing sound structures and passages, which fall together coherently and sometimes violently. With transformations round every dark and sinister corner, “Decathexis” is not experimental. Avant-garde maybe, but it’s more about exploration and expanse. Having been taken to the underworld, we begin in thrashing tones. It sets the mood, as the progression is that of thunder and sweeping devastation. There are twists and turns galore. “Diagnosis” has the most. More measured than “Symptom”, the moaning turns to Gorgorothian heaviness. And then a haunting and dark jazz saxophone cuts through the scene and ads a yet further sinister dimension. From this we are somehow transported to sweeping chaos, and muddy swamps and obscure, chattering voices. A classical piano piece intervenes but it’s not there to calm or charm us because its sharp and fusty tones are suggestive of a house of horror. From threatening and authoritative spoken words, a kaleidoscope of violent yet expansive and even lush sounds erupts. Vocally it’s like listening to Bal-Sagoth’s Lord Byron at times but with the cold and menacing vocal knife-twists of Gaahl.
The progressions and movements are enormous over these three hefty tracks. “Decathexis” is a complete adventure. It’s just like a dark musical story being narrated. There’s so much to take in. but it’s ok. I can take the battering. I can listen to the album again and appreciate once more its skilful structures, its technical supremacy and its uncompromising intensity and darkness.
(9/10 Andrew Doherty)
Leave a Reply