If you don’t know whether to play in a hardcore, sludge or black metal style, the solution is simple: you play all three. That’s what Lithuanian band Erdve do. This is their second album release. The subject matter, which amounts to “in-depth reflection on concepts such as domestic violence, utmost disgusting behaviour, crimes against humanity, and extremism”, fits the hybrid style. The title of this album translates as “self-pity” and again reflects the values of a grim world.
A wall of extreme noise greets us. “Lavondėmės” is the first representation of the grim world. Roaring, sirening – restful it is not. I don’t know what Lavondėmės means but I’m guessing it’s something that suggests a psychologically disturbing headache. If that’s our first lesson in self-pity, the blow is not softened by “Smala”, which saws through our brain still further and brings us closer to the apocalypse. The “vocalist” screams manically. Yet it all makes sense in a twisted kind of way. The slower, throbbing “Votis” merely signals an emergency. This album plants images of the most disturbing order in our head. It could be a radiation leak. It’s definitely a disaster. Cult of Luna’s world is about birds and bees by comparison to this. 100,000 cases of coronavirus? Don’t worry, it could be worse – Erdve will tell you about it.
Chaos resumes in its most extreme form with “Betonas” (Concrete) – more walls of crushing noise and destruction. ‘Tis the world of Zyklon or Axis of Perdition. The air is filled to suffocation point with noise to overwhelm us. Industrial warfare and indistinct explosions mark the short “Pleura” before ear-splitting anarchic destruction gnaws away at us in the extreme form of “Bendryste”. Inevitably religious church dogma intervenes, maybe suggesting salvation, but have no fear – it is overcome by monstrous and angry extremity. Nothing is going to stand of the way of violence and bloodshed. “Sugretinimas” (Juxtaposition) is a fight. “Pragulos”, which follows, is the nearest we get to post metal with its monotone style, pungent drum beats and big chords. After all the destruction comes the funeral. It is very effective and atmospheric with its haunting melancholy yet inevitable hardness. The title track isn’t so much self-pity as tortured suffering. Cleverly it breaks away from the torture and harks back to the dark reflections of “Pragulos” before expanding and plumbing further sinister depths. The classical gloom of “Skilimas” suggest a kind of closure if that were ever possible after all this mind-twisting torture, but it’s not the end as extremity returns with the foreboding-filled “Takoskyra”. But this is not just an exercise in extreme metal and never has been. The album dies, and indeed we die for surely that is the point with a passage of haunting melancholy from the chilly Baltic land of Lithuania.
Strange to say for an album of such extremity, but “Savigaila” is a profoundly subtle and powerful work. It preys on our mind, it imposes itself on us in an overbearing but psychologically disturbing way. It’s a world of machines, emergencies, warfare and assault but as we are crushed mercilessly, there’s space for melancholy and tragedy. But even so it is suffocating. In spite of the album’s title, I’m not sure there’s any scope for self-pity here. With Erdve it’s a case of no holds barred as they creatively convey their vision of this disturbed world in its full glory.
(9/10 Andrew Doherty)
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