Has it really been 2 whole years since we last covered a Vardan release? Talk about time flying. It appears that it was Unholy Lightless Summer since we last had something turn up but of course that does not mean our Sicilian maestro has not been busy and a couple of full-lengths, splits and demos have all seen the darkness of night since then. I guess they just didn’t make it to us. Apparently, this is album number 33 but to be honest who in their right minds is actually counting and keeping up. I’m sure there are some obsessive collectors out there who have to get everything, good luck to them is all I can say.
So, is this a dark and desolated March as in the month or in respect of a brisk military walk? I’m not sure on that point although if the latter it would be more of a plod as the doomy blackness is in a slow and cumbersome flow this time around. The 46-minute album is divided into V parts as per the album title and is instantly identifiable as the first sequence tars in gloomy and stygian darkness, necrotic howls full-throated and dismally blood-thirsty as they coat the instrumentation. There are some strange and otherworldly synth pulses here and the nostalgic romance of the keyboards are prolific and eerie, haunting this desolate void whilst drums slowly thud and beat. Melody is strange but ripe and festering, occasionally sounding off-key but purposely so as this repetitive slow churn takes on a hallucinatory and unsettling flow. Some may find it simply too lugubrious but that is very much the point here and those who do like slow-encroaching atmospheric darkness will be equally spellbound. An unceasingly cold winter is very much the vision that is likely to lodge in the head as you move through the passages here. There is very little in the way of light, or even hope. The second part gets more urgent with the slow drumming building into a bruising battering for a while and those screams getting all the more venomous. A short period of numbing hypothermia settles over and then some nasty grinding turbulence which rails through the track along with ever present chorus of lost souls manipulated via the keyboards. There’s actually quite a lot going on here.
I find myself quite fixated by the 3rd part here and that is down to the melodious disharmony of the keyboards which are really reminiscent of mid-era Killing Joke along with the graven solemnity of Xasthur. A good mix as far as I am concerned. Fuzzy guitars and mournful melodies paint the world shades of white via snow falling and black down to the constantly encroaching onset of night. A sinister twilight world full of sorrow and abandonment but it is really a quite beautiful one. We may well be alone here but there is no chance of plague encroaching as outsiders will not find their way in. Keyboards tinkle with some piano like melody and the symphonic elements are strident and harsh like the weather itself. Another really good album here from Vardan who continues to go from strength to strength with rugged determination. As summer dies this is one to put away for cold winter nights. I have a feeling there are plenty of those just a step away and this will be a perfect listening experience to lock yourself away and hope that the eventual thaw will bring us out the other side; the way 2020 is going though that very much remains to be seen.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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