Pembrokeshire Wales is a lovely place. Many childhood holidays were spent there and it was one of the last places revisited before the Covid plague kept everyone at home (or should have done). It is steeped in legend and history as well as having gorgeous beaches and is a place of profound mystery and hauntings too. From the gorgeous castle wall town of Tenby to its castles and MOD heathland there are some fascinating places to check out. Apart from beaten tracks down implausible to drive down country lanes in search of farmyard cider, my last visit had left me really feeling the weathered ages and sense of bygone times via Carew Castle and St Govan’s Chapel, hewn into the imposing cliff-face itself.

It should come as no surprise therefore that Pembroke has its own strange ‘Black Circle’ of which bands such as Revenant Marquis, Capel Beulah, Ogof, Plaguehurst and Tânahanner reside within. Not much info is available about this online although props go to Zero Tolerance magazine for a recent report with many of the artists within it. Revenant Marquis the sole entity of S are probably the most noteworthy of them all having already released 4 albums prior to this along with a split with Lamp Of Murmuur. I was intrigued when 5th album Below The Landsker Line popped in and was all ears.

Firstly, I should explain that some Welsh people stick proudly to roots and traditions and are not very keen on invading holiday makers and tourists popping their heads over the castle ramparts. The Landsker Line divides the traditional Welsh language speaking part of Pembrokeshire with the English speaking “Little England beyond Wales” If you are false do not entry, indeed!

‘Haverfordwest’ with its huge imposing fortress is the first stop here getting a ten-minute track in its name. Hugely interested with all that has led up to pressing play unfortunately this is where things start to go very wrong. After a gloomy, misty rainswept intro, a monument to such imposing edifices, the drums hammer in and one of two things are obvious. S has not got the slightest clue of the rudiments of production, mixing and mastering or simply doesn’t give two hoots about them. I was expecting rawness but even that needs to be listenable and this is far from it. All the levels are turned up to the roof and the result is reverb and distortion. It sounds like a saxophone is being played on the album which makes it all the odder but honestly you simply can’t make out what on earth is really going on. This could well be recorded in a cave with waves crashing against the rocks and the nearby MOD carrying out ordnance tests, what a horrible mess. And that is a shame as there’s obviously some really interesting ideas in here, from that unearthly sax sound to the hateful vocal howls and thumping drive, its strange and has its own distinct atmosphere, if only one could penetrate the incredible density of it all. In interests of fairness I got a professional engineer who has been involved in mixing work from extreme metal to some of the biggest artists in the world to take a listen to this track and they commented “that’s a spectacularly poor mix…over compressed and almost all of the HF EQ is missing making it sound dull…I know that some genres of black metal intentionally sound ‘underproduced’ and raw but this doesn’t even have the piercing ‘frost’ because the mixer has removed all the high frequencies.”

Checking the download sent into review with this track and others from ‘Youth In Ribbons’ on Bandcamp, unfortunately this seems to be the Revenant one’s modus operandi. There are ambient parts which although still throb give some respite and slight definition but it’s not long before the next lengthy slab that is ‘Children of the Grand Abyss’ thunders in shattering every possible bone on every possible rock on its descent.

This is so frustrating, this is an album I should be rushing out to buy if I thought there would be more clarity to it, along with the entire back catalogue if available. It would make no difference though and for me this is simply impenetrable. Short arcane instrumental ‘Beibl’ conjures great atmosphere and parts of this such as on ‘Geist Unbaptised’ contain sections that sound uncannily like old style swing music within their heaving seismic cavernous structure but on the whole it’s a lost cause here. Perhaps I simply do not get it but I really don’t have a problem with raw sound but when it’s mangled whether purposely or not, I’m sadly out and can only give a score reflecting on this and even here I’m being generous.

(4/10 Pete Woods)

https://infernaprofundusrecords.bandcamp.com/album/below-the-landsker-line