I was quite taken with the sophomore album by Finnish black metal weirdos Vaina. Their ability to blend so many different genres into their style, seamlessly, was quite remarkable and took me back to the mid-90s when bands like Arcturus and Dodheimsgard and many other lost names were prodding and poking at the black metal envelope. So yeah this new album had my name tagged to it.

‘…I form the light and create the darkness. I make peace and create evil: I the lord do all these things.” Isiah45:6-7 is the opening statement on the inlay. Duality in one, a god of good and evil. Strange the things you can find in the Bible.

Opener ‘Tuulentavoittelijat’ has a sombre intro that progresses through a strange goth like moment or two into a strange mix of raw and dead-snare drumming that splices the black metal to mix of religious sounding choral vocals and snarled black metal with rising orchestration with strings and horns. A menacing touch of old Dead Can Dance. It’s like wandering into a cathedral, unknowingly interrupting some strange occult ceremony. ‘Piikkikruunun Alkemia’ has that almost trip-hop drumming, choral and snarled vocals slowly gliding through the space and sombre, awe inspiring spoken words seemingly responded to by inhuman, glowering rasps. ‘Inverted’ slides into a gentle world of curiously languid clean vocals and a backing that glides between a little touch of smooth jazz and an inexorable rise into the high religious echoes. There’s real beauty here, the gentle horns leading us…into a vile snarl and a prog tinged exit.

Yes, this is Vaina, clearly. Strange, ethereal one moment and malevolent the next. Lost in their own waltz.

‘Incinerate’ finds the speed. Strained vocals think old Ozzy (!) lost in a fever dream. Some tremendous riffing drives this on as straight a track as Vaina get. Chugging gear shifts. The ever present horns. More immediate yet, but no less stunning and disorientating in its own way.

‘Moribundus Sum’ is a quiet interlude, the sound of light reflecting from something lost in a haze, a bass led meander until the drums drop for ‘Golgatan Tahti’ fearful wall of noise and then immediately strange quiet, cackling voices and a flute driven place where every sound seems at odds with the next and yet still creates a singular space. Chanted vocals are the bulwark here, holding back the weirdness. Mostly. But the chaos always finds a way even as the chants fade into the distance.

‘Unio Mystica’ feels dense despite the sparse opening. The background vocal sounds, the intermittent slow guitar, the mix of the chanting and the spoken vocals, the occasional strangled cry as the bass line gentle lies back and seemingly smiles. Calm and frustration seemingly in one place. ‘Hautakuiskaaja’ has that almost goth drive to it, with a melody that has more than a little gloom rock to, and is like a hall of mirrors with sudden and seemingly random shifts of mood and sound.

‘Viimeinen Kaunis Silmays’ closes this album in Vaina’s usual unique form. Shifts and hypnotic chaos both gentle and insistent.

‘For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake’ – Philippians 1:29 ends the inlay.

What do I make of it, bookended by quotes that set the Christian deity in a far more malevolent and uncaring place than most ever muse on and yet undeniably exists in the text. What do I make of it all? I don’t know is the truth. With most of the lyrics in Finnish, most of the album is closed off to me and the music is idiosyncratic, utterly perplexing and yet so clearly intelligent, deeply thought out and overflowing with ideas that you can only go with the two biblical quotes as the stage for the musings. And the music is simply excellent.

Difficult. Complex. Perhaps a little too calm in places even with the constant shifts of the music for me. Perhaps this one I admire more than like. And yet I can do nothing other than recommend it to the adventurous and hope Vaina continue to follow their journey.

Whatever this is, it is not simply ‘black metal’ in any way. This is an alchemical beast, a chimera.

(7/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/vainaband

https://www.aestheticdeath.com/releases.php?mode=singleitem&albumid=6192