It’s always nice exploring new music in the process of writing reviews for a site like Ave Noctum, but in my experience, it’s even more fun when said new music comes from a band you’ve been meaning to check out for ages. This week’s case in point is Kurokuma, a genre-busting trio from Yorkshire, who have been forging their own psychedelic sound out of mismatched fragments of sludge, doom and death for the best part of a decade now. They somehow manage to inhabit the space between all three of the above genres, while not really being any of them, in much the same way that early Alcest existed in the same geographical region as black, post and shoegaze, but didn’t fit cleanly into any of those boxes. This is the crux of Kurokuma’s appeal for me – I love a good bit of genre-bending and busting, but when genres are melded together in such a way that the end result is something new, that’s one of my biggest musical weaknesses, and as such I have high, high hopes for Of Amber and Sand.
Before we get into the album proper, it’s worth noting that although this looks like a fairly hefty album, coming in at 11 tracks long, it’s actually a bit on the slender side if anything. There are six full length tracks here, ranging from just over two minutes to well over ten, but there are also five interlude type tracks, the longest of which is a hair over a minute long. I don’t dislike albums with this sort of structure, but it has been mildly controversial in the past, as Judas Priest found out circa 2008 with Nostradamus. (For the record, I loved Nostradamus, which put me in something of a minority at the time, and I suspect that hasn’t changed.) That said, having listened to it a few times already, the interludes here fit well around the full-length tracks, and the most common criticisms of interludes being too numerous/weak or generally used as filler, don’t apply here. All of that said, Kurokuma don’t describe it as six tracks and five interludes, because they’re a metal band and of course they don’t. According to their Bandcamp, this proffered album is actually “6 meditations on the theme of time, all bound together with 5 liminal pieces taking the listener from the inception of existence to the endless beyond”. So, there you have it. Incidentally, I’m not going to get too far into the album’s theming, because there’s so much going on here musically (which is the bit I prefer to write about anyway), and also because I’m already struggling to stop listening to it for long enough to write, and picking over the theming isn’t really going to help on that front.
Getting on with the album proper, given the exact reason why I’ve been curious about Kurokuma, I was both slightly confused and excited when the opener, I am Forever, not only kicks off with a rooster (!), but is also altogether faster, livelier and more melodic than anything I was expecting from a band that regularly have the words ‘sludge’ and ‘doom’ attached to their music. Side note, this is the second album in a row I’ve reviewed that kicks off with random animal noises, which I suppose keeps me on my toes if nothing else?
Aforementioned opener, I am Forever, leans heavily into the groove metal end of death, complete with Cookie Monster vocals™, some borderline noodly nu-metal vibes, and an instrumental interlude that sounds so much like Orphaned Land that I half expect Kobi Farhi to start yelling at me in the middle of it. So in terms of genre(s), frankly this is already a lot, and I’m here for it. This leads into interlude, sorry “liminal piece” number one, which is a nice bit of atmospheric soundscaping, but otherwise fairly unremarkable. It does lead into the next track nicely though, which is Death No More. Here, a series of repetitive refrains create a hypnotic deathy, sludgy effect that gradually acquires more and more layers, including more death metal vocals, until I begin to understand how Kurokuma can be both death, sludge and doom, but also somehow none of those things. It’s heavy and dense enough that it could be called doom, but it’s too fast and lively to be true doom. It’s heavy and abrasive enough that I get where sludge comes into the equation, but it doesn’t fit cleanly into that box either. It’s also very death metal, but there’s more than enough of the others that it’s not straight death. I also understand where the hallucinogenic, mind-altering descriptor comes in, but it’s a fairly subtle thread until you get to the final track (spoilers).
That’s not to say I don’t like it though. For starters it’s just under seven minutes in length, yet there’s so much to try and pin down here, that at absolutely no point does it feel even close to that long, and I mean that in a good way. In fact, in a sense this is proving a difficult album to write about, because the album itself keeps distracting me from writing about it. It’s like the occasional albums I get that I enjoy so much that I almost don’t want to dissect them in order to write a review, only it’s the album itself that doesn’t want to be written about. Which is a new one even for me. An album so good that I keep forgetting to write about it.
Our next liminal piece is the indeed extremely liminal Clepsydra, which sounds not unlike listening to the ghost of a Kurokuma track from a very, very long way away, punctuated by dripping water. We then leap into what is probably my favourite track on the entire album, Fenjaan. Boasting a frankly unfeasible amount of groove for an album of any of the previously mentioned flavours, this is the closest Of Amber and Sand gets to a good old-fashioned earworm. I have no real notes about this track, except that it’s a really good example of what I’m beginning to recognise as Kurokuma’s sound, and I really want to see this one live at some point.
Next is Bell Tower, which basically does what it says on the tin, and provides a tolling bell resonating over a sparse, shimmering sound that could so very easily be something by or akin to Terry Riley. This then melts almost imperceptibly into Neheh, which – don’t get me wrong – is great, but also sounds like a sludgy, vaguely doomy take on the theme music to some old police procedural TV show. Which isn’t a vibe I was expecting to find on this or any other metal album, but I don’t hate it.
Next up is a combination that goes so well together I’m going to tackle them as one: Timekeeper and Crux Ansata. This pair of tracks sound like so many different artists whirling together in a musical maelstrom that it frankly makes my head hurt, as good psychedelia does tend to, pretty much by design. Every time I think I’ve pinned down who it reminds me of, I have another train of thought about a completely different artist, and the thing is…all of those comparisons work. There’s an experimental noise rock edge that could be Gospel-era Årabrot (especially the vocals in places), there’s a groove metal aspect that sounds like Sepultura having a crack at something sludgy. The melodic, delicate parts with big heavy riffs that keep surging forward reminds me of a sort of mid-point between Old Silver Key and Drudkh in a way that I’m absolutely not upset with. I could also mention Orphaned Land again, but in the spirit of spreading the love around, let’s go with Melechesh or Al-Namrood instead.
All of which is a lot, and we’ve still got the obligatory 10+ minute behemoth to finish up on. Which starts off in a remarkably minimalist manner given the rest of the album – its pair, Awakening, consists of a single ascending note, that rests up in the rafters for a moment, before Chronoclasm gets going with a similarly pared down drumbeat. It then proceeds into what I can only describe as Astrohenge covering Sunrise of the Interplanetary Dream Collector, with maybe a smidgen of Bell Witch’s more melodic side in the mix as well. It’s a suitably epic track to finish an album on, particularly an album of this quality, and psychedelic is a woefully inadequate word for what’s going on here. Then the heaviness fades in and out as it continues, unrelenting, to the gasp of distortion and static that the album comes to a close with.
You know when animators want to represent mind-altering anything, and you get that spiralling whirlpool of neon colours all melting together, to presumably act as a visual analogy for going on the trip of a lifetime? Of Amber and Sand is a bit like that. There’s so much in the mix here that you could drive yourself mad trying to find it all (and I nearly have), yet it all comes together to make something coherent, that is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but also distinct from each individual piece that makes up the Kurokuma sound. The components are fairly easily identified, as detailed above, but the final result doesn’t fit into any one box, and I love that for both the album and for Kurokuma. When Alcest did it, I always thought of it as them taking bits of all the boxes their music should fit into in theory, and making their own box out of the pieces. As in, Alcest’s music does indeed fit perfectly into a box, it’s just that that box says “Alcest” on it, rather than a genre, and I think Kurokuma are the same sort of band. There isn’t an existing label for their music, so they’re making their own. Certainly, there’s no real interest here in fitting into pre-existing boxes and genres, and – for me at least – that’s a huge part of the fun.
(9.5/10 Ellie)
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