The End of Being

After a decade or so of releasing demos, depressive raw BM act Висельник – from here on, referred to as "Viselnik" for the sake of convenience - finally got around to recording and releasing its debut album "End of Being" in 2021; and after a few years, I finally got around to listening to it. At least Viselnik's music on "End of Being" is not very different from what it was when I heard "Smoldering Existence", the last of Viselnik's demos I heard some years ago. With multi-instrumentalist / vocalist Neratoh at the helm as before, the high-pitched pipe-like lead guitar and the steelier if noisy bass guitar are still the dominant instruments used throughout, with the drumming so faint you barely notice it exists, and very little other instrumentation employed. The atmosphere is rough, harsh and bleak, and the production, while basic, is good enough that the music has the depth and range of emotion it needs.

As with previous work by this band, "End of Being" dwells on the futility of existence, and the purpose of life as being little more than a prelude to death. Right from the start with "The Forgotten Dead", the album is a never-ending dirge with the guitar and bass in lockstep with each other though at the same time pursuing their individual paths – the guitar being more folk-like and sorrowful in tone, the bass being stern and chunky – while the vocals rage and wail more or less continuously. The lead guitar can be very shrill and its sound a bit nasal, but the music's lower end holds up very solidly and counterbalances the sharper and more piercing tremolo melodies. Over three songs the music follows this template, the guitars commanding your attention and the vocals screaming and almost sobbing behind them. The third song "Self-Destruction of Living Matter" exaggerates the guitars' characteristics almost to the point of shattering your eardrums as the music bulks up with even more choppy riffing, some droning and a twangy edge added to some of the guitar layers.

At this point, the first of a pair of tracks "Emtiness I" (sic), half-acoustic, half-BM noise, and set in an environment where reverb makes the music absolutely hellish and unbearable, appears to divide the album into two distinct halves. From here on, the next couple of songs make more use of folk melodies to produce an absolutely doleful soundtrack to end your life by. Lead guitar and bass make parallel journeys, neither really challenging the other, at a steady pace in a bleak dark space. Neratoh screams in frustration throughout, and the quiet percussion continues on its own subdued path.

Just when you were expecting no relief from the dirge depressive music, an unexpected surprise pops up briefly in "Dying Nature" with a beautiful gentle acoustic string melody and a clean youthful female vocal by guest singer Valeria Reine, sounding wistful and dream-like, sings and croons some distance away. The album ends with the second of the paired tracks "Emptiness II", again partly acoustic and partly melodic / folk / noise BM, and sharp and spiky in its presentation, with the vocals screeching in sheer desperation.

Technically this album features rather more polished music than I remember, with the folk elements more to the fore and conveying the despair and desperation of a life lived without hope and true purpose. Much of the album is a sheer endurance test of very gloomy depressive and suicidal music, though on some tracks the combination of sorrowful folk melodies and tough chunky riffs, and the huge sonic contrast between these are very intense. For some listeners, the gorgeous "Dying Nature" may be well worth the effort of getting through the rest of the album. This unexpected departure, short though it is, might suggest that Viselnik is expanding its musical range and horizons beyond raw atmospheric DSBM.