Somber Vampyric Night

From noisy raw atmospheric BM beginnings on debut EP "A Frigid Spectre", Missouri-based project Ascalapha follows a more melodic, conventional song-based path on first album "Somber Vampyric Night". While the EP dealt with loss, abandonment and lack of hope and purpose, here the album revolves around a vampiric creature, tormented by anger, despair and guilt, and in thrall to appetites and instincts it cannot control in an unending and dreary life. The protagonist is driven by instinct to seek out and take the lives and blood of those who remind him of the life he once had – or might have had, had he not become a vampire. In nine songs, most of which feature lyrics, we gain an insight into the unending existential pain and anguish experienced by the vampire, and perhaps by others of his kind, in flowing raw music of fury, darkness and intense feeling that emphasise the vampire's inner turmoil.

The first few songs on the album from "Dark Moon" through "Ceaseless Drought" and "Nameless Path" to the title track carve out a standard melodic 1990s-era second-wave BM path with sometimes distinct riffs, rapid-fire blast-beat percussion and strong raspy vocals whose range travels from snarls and growls to groans and screams. There's a lot of repetition in the music, especially in the title track where the tension and underlying ferocity build up to almost unbearable levels and an early, bloody climax can be anticipated. It's on the title track that the vocals really start to shine, dripping as they do with a mix of sheer venom and relish, horror and revulsion, and madness and confusion as our anti-hero is compelled to follow the voices in his head.

"Our Lives Intertwined" brings some instrumental ambient relief in a simple yet darkly evocative track of repetitive riff loop / synth tone-poem minimalism, and leads us into another phase in which Burzumesque black metal and synth melodies are mixed into music that can be muscular and powerful yet still melancholy and regretful. "Noche sombria" ("Sombre night") runs from sadness to anger and savagery in music that constantly shifts and rarely repeats itself, echoing the complex emotions and memories of its protagonist. In its variety, urgency and rugged energy, this song is the major highlight of the album. "Una Vida Que No Es Mia" ("A Life that is not mine") is a more despondent, all instrumental piece commenting perhaps on "Noche sombria", its jangly tones reflecting regret and sorrow for what has been lost and what cannot be changed. The album comes to a resolution in "Remorse", in which the protagonist takes leave of us to continue on the path he chose and for which he accepts responsibility for, even as it fills him with self-loathing and hatred. We are left with a deep feeling of emptiness and sadness for a being labouring under an eternal curse, for whom immortality is punishment.

The musical and thematic direction Ascalapha has taken on "Somber Vampyric Night" may have been trodden by a thousand million other BM acts, though the raw and aggressive style of music shows plenty of spirit and ferocity still in the classic 1990s melodic black metal of bands like Darkthrone, Emperor, Immortal and Burzum. Using a minimalist approach emphasising melody and repetition, with just a small set of instruments (guitars, synths, piano and percussion), Ascalapha musicians Monstro and Nikola Dušmanić describe in depth a tale of a dark being in thrall to savage appetites and instincts which repel him and cause him anguish and self-loathing, yet which paradoxically lead him to commit more and greater acts of violence and blood-shedding depravity. The tools and methods used may be familiar to MA fans to the point of being banal, but the portrait so painted is not so easily forgotten.