Emerald Sunsets

This compilation brings together the last handful of digital only releases from this Greek outfit. Greek, but spiritually it is Ukrainian. The tranquil melancholy of the Drudkh-esque cover art tells you all you need to know about this music. Peasant black metal in the finest tradition of Tolstoy. One is reminded of his self-insert character Levin and his journey toward the end of Anna Karenina, seeking some form of spiritual rest through the simple fulfilment of need that agricultural communities lived by, stripping away the complexes of bureaucracy and disconnected material existences of urban Russia in its industrial infancy.

But before we get too carried away by the image of the simple 19th Century Russian peasant worrying about ducks flying to Moscow, lets return to A Diadem of Stars. This music essentially apes the work of Roman Saenko, particularly the aforementioned Drudkh for its galloping tempos, and soaring tremolo picked riffs made of simple, gloomy chord sequences, trading on a layering of rhythm guitar tracks as opposed to any active lead melodies. This is a tried and true formula, fixated on providing a basic yet engaging sense of journey, but one that pivots almost entirely on atmosphere. The cumulative effect of the layered guitars draws the listener in, with the scenery populated by simple ascents and descents, minimalist clean vocal chants, and only the most basic switches in tempo deployed to give a sense of motion.

Neofolk is the hidden dictator at work behind this sparse musical landscape, linking together the black metalist tendencies with the overarching thematic material A Diadem of Stars are attempting to work with. The distorted tone populates these pieces with the realities of life’s many brute revelations, whilst the brief melodic fragments that do emerge – along with some acoustic interludes and light choral textures – populate these pieces with a human perspective, the agents that must succumb to or overcome the inevitable demands of earthly existence, the immediacy of needs presented to people in preindustrial communities. This latter fact is both a source of catharsis – there existence was, after all, free of dehumanising Marxist alienation from their labour – yet also a wellspring of sorrow.

The music of a Diadem of Stars is perhaps not quite sophisticated enough to marshal this complex thematic material into a coherent narrative. They deploy aesthetic hints, nods to acute melancholia via the lens of atmospheric black metal, and brief insights into the complex psychological bridges we – as residents of late capitalism – must build in order to enter the mindset of individuals that inhabited subsistence communities. But ‘Emerald Sunsets’ only manages a mere acknowledgement that there is a bridge to be built. The immersive construction of this bridge is yet to be undertaken.

Originally published at Hate Meditations