It seems perfect timing that a week or so after covering one bunch of English eccentrics Void that it is the turn of another, Code now. Both groups started out in similar fashion and indeed there was a crossover point to a large extent with members in the early days and both flirted with players from the weird end of the black metal scene going on outside the UK. Undoubtedly it was <code> who got the most attention via more prolific output and bigger label attention and early albums Nouveau Gloaming and Resplendent Grotesque were fantastic examples of strange ectoplasmic musical seances that sounded like they had escaped via a spirit board straight out of the Victoriana age. Things changed stylistically over the years and also as far as band members were concerned. Musically the group got even odder and more progressive. Here today though we are promised “a return in style to the sharp blackened extreme metal of their early albums,” so, is this the case?
Firstly, what a wonderful album title! For me it puts an image of a regal corpse swinging in the breeze having its reign of tyranny usurped by the gallows in my mind. The body is blooming with maggots and swelling, about to split open to blossom with foul flies. The ‘buzzing rapture’ of the lyrics suggest similar visions and as for the song itself, the opening number be prepared for a savage salvo of blasts and throaty roars suggesting very much that return to seething blackness. This is as fast and furious a number as we have heard from the band, there are thick and thorny guitars, spoken and gabbled vocal rhetoric and a feeling of hideousness seeping out between the pores, pure horror-show and downright creepy with it. Vocalist Wacian like Khvost in the past has channelled something from ancient times here and sounds possessed. There’s some fantastic melodic flamboyance from the guitar department of Aort and Andras too and after this fantastical opening statement one can only wonder what twisted path we are going to be led down next. Whispering vocals and strange sounds ooze out like ghostly vapour as we move to ‘Clemency & Atrophy.’ It’s noted that songs are not particularly lengthy on the whole and neither is the album but so much is packed into it that it will completely command your attention. Vocally it changes constantly, there’s some fantastic clean harmonies on it and that is matched by some sublime music too, having got the extremity out of the way on the first track things are not necessarily quite as aggressive now and at times a better description stylistically is perhaps phantasmagorical.
By The Charred Stile certainly takes back to the weirdness of bands such as Ved Buens Ende vocally and the eccentric unravelled fronds of Dodheimsgard in the more spiteful guitar barbs. I am more relaxed in its grasp than I was in works such as Augur Nox as even if this is still a tricky album to sit down and write about it feels less confusing and more like the era of the band I truly loved; it’s like coming home and never more so than when the spectacular rousing chorus of ‘Rat King’ hits. I guess by comparison ‘From The Next Room’ could be considered a slow burning ballad but don’t let that put you off, even as it flirts with mainstream sensibilities (more of that later). It’s a gorgeous song, the likes of which would not be out of place on a Hexvessel (it’s impossible to escape completely from Mathew McNerney’s past contributions here) album before the drums solidify and pound away. What a vocalist Wacian has truly developed into here. The poeticism continues to intrigue from the “feral grasp” and “foaming gore” of ‘Dread Stridulate Lodge’, a choppy haunted house of a number that pursues down corridors of dread and leaves you totally rattled on its short journey. Then there’s the virulent fiery and choppy thrashing, pitch-black tumult of Scold’s Bridle to contend with in a similar musical fashion of a poltergeist throwing a temper tantrum.
Nothing quite prepares for 11-minute finale ‘The Mad White Hair’ and it is here that those hinted at mainstream facets truly come into play. At first the spectre of the late-great David Bowie hangs over things and there is a definite singer songwriter slant here before the spectral hypnosis of the band goes into full flow. It’s the rise into the full near operatic wails of the chorus along with the main melody that hits you though and there’s some of that stadium rafter raising sense of bands like Radiohead and Muse within it, knocking you flat on your back with its power and patiently waiting for it to be repeated. Complete with some divine guitar interplay towards final exorcism this album really has delivered the magic and will continue to haunt over repeated plays. And of-course it needs to be experienced live….
(8.5/10 Pete Woods)
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