I’m writing this on the 24th of February 2022, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine and began a war. A war in Europe, in the 21st century. If you had asked me only a week ago if war was a possibility, I would have said no. Not in Europe, not in the 21st century. Today, after watching the events unfold, I feel stupid, naïve and depressed. If today isn’t a day for depressive black metal, then that day will never come.
DSMB might be challenging to listen to and also difficult to grasp for some, but I find it is a legitimate form of dealing with the nastiness of life. Whether Lichtblick (Engl.: glimpse of light) have named themselves ironically after an expression of hope, or whether they have done so because the music they make helps them cope, we don’t know, but the least we can do is to acknowledge that they feel the way they feel and that their attitude reflects their experience. And an experience, though always subjective, is someone’s reality and therefore valid.
Lichtblick are from Ried in Innkreis which is a small town in Austria situated on the foothills of the Alps. Abkehr (Engl.: turning away from something) is their second full-length album. It follows Phrenesis, which was released in 2018 and an EP which came out in 2015. What breeds DSBM in rural Austria? Well, there’s a lot that can go wrong, even if you are growing up in a rather affluent western European country. If you don’t know that, you’ve clearly got some catching up to do regarding the background of some major figures in black metal, and also regarding horror movies set in the German-speaking Alpine region.
Abkehr features six tracks spread over roughly 42 minutes of running time. The track titles are in German and English, whether that extends to the lyrics I cannot say because they are utterly unintelligible. A mixture between howling, wailing, crying and screaming, the vocal performance is definitely one of the album’s most memorable and most intense features. It is also the aspect that particularly gets to you, especially after repeated listens, because it’s providing clear evidence of someone’s raw emotions and worrisome state of mind. The music, on the other hand, is eclectic and not without hopeful and beautiful moments. The usual black metal template of fast drumming and tremolo picked guitars has been modified to include slower, dragging tempos and numerous passages featuring only one instrument, often acoustic guitar. The effect this has on the overall sound is that it intensifies feelings of melancholia and sadness and reduces aggressiveness.
One of the album’s tracks is named Amaurosis which is a medical term for partial or total blindness without visible change in the eye. Likewise, suffering and depression are not always happening in plain sight. Things can look unremarkable, but the situation can still be bad. We hardly ever know what someone else is going through.
One thing we do know is that war will cause collective suffering and trauma for generations to come, as it always has. Today is a day for depressive black metal.
(7/10 Slavica)
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