Journey into the Depths of Night

Aäkon Këëtrëh's dark ambient demos, especially the latter two, are excellent works in the genre. However, before we got "Dans la forêt..." and "The Dark Winter", Aäkon released his first demo in 1995 titled "Journey into the Depths of Night". His debut demo sounds promising, but when you give it a listen, you'll find that Këëtrëh hasn't exactly found his sound yet. Because of this, this demo ends up feeling a bit lackluster.

Unlike the next two demos, this one has 6 tracks that are actually titled. The instruments on this album are a mixed bag though. For example, in the song "Until the Twilight", it starts off with an acoustic guitar that plays a nice, soft riff. However, it then goes out of tune and plays a simple and dull riff. This on and off tuning is presented a lot in the demo, and it can get annoying pretty fast. Not only that, but the black metal riffs that play occasionally sound generic and don't offer anything new to the table, as shown in the tracks "Bedrövelse..." and "Journey". The atmosphere they bring in is passable, but their sound is just a bit too off-key.

But while the instruments are slightly off, the vocals are a major problem in this demo. Këëtrëh's vocals sound aggravated and desperate, which give off a very terrible sound, as presented in the first track "Sufferings". Starting off your demo with painfully horrible shrieks isn't exactly a smart idea, but it gets even worse when we move to the next track "Until the Twilight", where as the acoustic guitar is playing its nice riff, Aäkon decides to scream and shriek with it, pretty much destroying the calming atmosphere of the guitar. Këëtrëh's vocals thankfully got better later on, but before, it was just unbearable.

Overall, this release felt underwhelming. While it does have its good bits, the instruments have plenty of weaker moments and Aäkon's vocals are just awful. Aäkon's next demo "Dans la forêt..." would fix up a lot of issues and would go on to be his best work, but "Journey into the Depths of Night" is a demo you should probably avoid listening to.

Aäkon Këëtrëh's first demo is an awkward little thing like a baby that's just started walking and keeps falling over because the ground is uneven. First of all there's all the screaming by the eponymous Lord AK himself every time he hits himself or has to walk on grass and he forgot he left bits of glass there from the alcoholic binge and fight the other night. Next there's the strumming on one chord and the accompanying groaning as he tries to co-ordinate singing with playing music and his hand keeps going on the strings while he has to pause for breath. Imagine the cries of frustration as AK realises the right hand follows not what the left hand (and the voice) do. The upward learning curve improves enormously though with the next couple of tracks resolutely instrumental if monotonous and AK discovering that he can mix two opposed tunes - one, a riff, the other a melody - together for good effect. Abrasive guitar texture layer can be used to generate sadness and a harsh atmosphere, the feeling that life is hard and lonely.

This is a purely experimental release, one in which AK is trying out ideas for their effect and usefulness to his dark ambient BM oeuvre. The ambience throughout this recording feels isolated, eerie, abandoned and melancholy. Song titles can suggest a vague narrative of being ostracised, falling into madness, trying to find escape, remaining in despair and suffering torment and pain as a result. The melodies are very basic and all instrumentation is restricted to one lone guitar with repetition being the backbone of nearly all songs.

Long-time Black Legions fans will swoop on this recording but it's also a handy tape for others to hear to learn something of how musicians might approach song composition, creating moods and atmospheres and experimenting with limited low quality equipment and just one instrument.

AK's first effort is perhaps the most un-dark ambient release of the three. There is very little ambience to be seen here, and is very immature in approach, and instrumentation. It is, however very sinister in it's sound, and is thus quite competent in that respect. There is very little flow, as each track is quite different, and there is no semblance of progression, where each track is somewhat of it's own entity. On the whole though, despite this lack of cohesion, the very short demo is quite good, and I like it much more than "The Dark Winter", but not nearly as much as the quitessential release "Dans la Foret". This is also the only release that features actual track names, and I think this is due to the overall inability to actually pinpoint an actual subject in each track that this can be attributed to.

Each track is different from the other, some utilizing actual guitar riffs in the black metal sense, some eloquent finger-picked sections, and also some complimentary overdubbed guitar duels that add to the texture and overall atmosphere of the demo. It is very short, only 12 minutes, and I suppose it is only half as long as it should be to give the listener a justified concept of what the purpose of the demo in it's entirety is trying to express.

Unfortunately, though, there lacks a sense of direction because of very different tones and sounds put forth in each of the tracks. When the demo begins, one may be reminded of a Amaka Hahina styled screams, and overdubbed wails and howls, but this is short-lived because the demo changes directions quite abruptly into whispered, and growled vocals with an added element of guitar interladen with AK's voice that is dripping with melancholy. Another curveball is thrown by AK, and there is another change in the demo's style, where it tangents off into a Burzum-esque simple riff using basic power chords, and sans vocals.

The most ambient track on the entire demo, (track 5) is a very beautiful "Dans la Foret" styled track with some distortion-less fingerpicking, and without vocals, but does not fit into the overall atmosphere that is drenched in hopelessness and pain. It is quite a breath of fresh air because the darkness in the previous tracks is quite suffocating. AK does indeed have a gift of inducing the feeling of dread, hate, and depression that I believe he wishes to pass on to the poor listener who delves into his work.

Again, this is another album that has very little sense of direction other than inducing some very dreary feelings in the pit of the listener's stomach. This album is much more forceful in it's delivery, with harsher vocals, darker guitar riffs, and an added element of beauty and daintiness not found in "The Dark Winter". It is not nearly as polished an effort as the sophomore release, but there are some excellent hints as to what will be in the future demos that AK is to unleash upon the world. This demo is recommended to those who appreciate ambient mixed with some very simplistic and low-fi black metal, along the lines of Moloch from Ukraine.