This curiously titled work comes from Kringa, a band which has been around for 13 years and which has now released two full albums along with some eps and demos. Essentially a black metal band, one thing which comes across is that this band has a propensity for the extreme.
Evidently a band for commas, “Across the Firmament, Stride!” open up proceedings. It has a familiar black metal base line, filled with contempt and unpleasantness. After spreading dark mists, it slows down and we find ourselves groping through the dark to the accompaniment of an atmospherically pained guitar line and spoken word. Breaking out, the storm builds up and the spoken word is now a dual combination of anger and screams. The tension mounts. This is not something to be taken lightly. “Gardens in Bloom” is faster moving and sounds initially like the second-generation black metal of Khold, but the scene transforms and sways between spookily sinister bass vibes and explosions of aggression and vibrations. Not so subtle is “Ablution”, which is a direct assault with all the echoing, ghoulish sounds and manic screams which characterise this band. All in all, Kringa specialise in being disturbing either through hammering and intensive violence or through demented-sounding and distorted soundscapes, or more usually a combination of both.
The end of “Labyrinth Heirs” sounds like the result of an evening out on the beer. “Vortex of Stillborn Fires” starts in a dark and sinister way. A bass tone and a tribal rhythm make way for the inevitable explosion of fury. Imperiously, the vocalist roars and laments amid the furious fires that burn. The instrumentals are extreme. The vocals are extreme. It is all extreme. But here as elsewhere the fury abates momentarily and we are guided through a discomforting place without hope. The warfare resumes, and again it’s a world of turbulence with chaos in the air and musical images of mass human suffering. The bass guitar is used to sinister effect in the swirling, ghoulish setting of “Improvisation, N.A. 07.04”. this piece follows the same pattern, like a cycle that we’re trapped in. Echoing voices of horror surround it. This is an album of indistinct half sounds to enhance its extremity, and it all sets a vision of a ghastly world full of nastiness and dangers. “Yoke of a Mirror Shard” ends the album. Raw in its sound, nasty, driving and not unlike Impaled Nazarene I thought, it is an old school metal assault with an echoing expanse which is suggestive of psychedelic winds blowing.
Kringa bring plenty of life, or perhaps more accurately I should say death, to this work. At his heart it’s black metal but of an atmospheric and extreme variety which is designed to be discomforting, disturbing and extreme. If that is the intention, then “All Stillborn Fires, Lick My Heart” achieves it.
(8/10 Andrew Doherty)
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