Black Tribe / The Silence

Side A

Black Tribe: This one-man project has, for quite a while, been lurking in the uncharted shadows that lay between raw black metal and the nameless realms of harsh drone industrial. Few notable bands have made fruitful expeditions into similar territory, but with this release, Black Tribe emerges with a quarter-hour, monolithic composition which presents something original altogether.

Both cover-art and title suggest an excursion into the fringes of esotericism, a dimly-lit space hanging between wild myth, history, whispered knowledge and occult technology; as the music begins, this intimation is carried further, with the guttural, eerie chanting of monks accompanied by bell-like percussion, immediately creating a tense air of subterranean ritual.

Gradually, other instruments join the proceedings. This is music that works in a similar way, perhaps, to Burzum and selected others, in its usage of several thematic melodies repeating and intertwining with each other in interlocking patterns. Sonically, however, it is very different; for a vague approximation, imagine a chance meeting on a dissecting table of Sort Vokter and early Current 93 (to borrow a phrase from the latter's Mr. Stapleton). It is done in an elaborate, layered structure, which enthralls through the organic textures created by its own complexity: the monk chants; the ritual percussion; hyperspeed drum beats; harsh distorted guitar, phasing in and out of riffs and phrases; keyboard passages; cavernous, howling vocals - one on top of the other, they conjure a coherent entity charged with mythical elusiveness and rumbling with a sense of ulterior chaos.

A word about the keyboard work: as opposed to some embarrassingly terrible bands out there, who choke the life out of their music with bouncy, crystalline, one-finger synth lines, Black Tribe's use of keyboards is integral to this composition (compare, if you will, to the works of the two black metal bands of those mentioned above). In certain parts, it sounds as if three different synthesized layers are present, each playing a different counterpoint phrase - one in particular having a low, ominous analog growl to it, which works very well here. When combined with the peculiar, low-fi production, this usage of keyboards creates a sound that sets this even further apart from the dead weight of dime-a-dozen clone bands.

This track is Black Tribe's finest work thus far, and bodes well for the efforts in those isolated spots within black metal to hold out against genre-wide gravitational collapse. Like Admiral Byrd's mythical jaunt, this esoteric journey to the depths will have meaning for those who can grasp it.

Side B

The Silence: The second track on the split is of comparable length, and the title evokes a similarity in themes with the first; but this band utilizes a far more abstract style which shares no aesthetic elements with any form of metal music, nor with the various strains of dark ambient that always seem to hover at the edges of black metal's sphere of influence. Rather, this is almost like a throwback to the mid-'80s heyday of post-industrial experimentation, when abject deviants and other shady figures gathered in basement venues and dank watering-holes to terrorize curious onlookers with their occult-tinged mayhem.

The ingredients here are a loud, thumping bass, an acoustic guitar, some sparse percussion, and quite a bit of frantic wave manipulation; all are treated to heavy echo/delay - a common disassociative agent for this sort of music, but its effectivity cannot be denied here - and are accompanied by solemn, recitative vocals, whose ritual utterances admittedly prove fairly troublesome to follow, but command attention. The guitar is used in sporadic bursts of confined harmony, while eerie distorted howls soon give way to drones that waffle back and forth between total noise terror and a quasi-melodic role (which is perhaps unintended, as it seems to exist more in the listener's mind than in the performance itself). With time, the song reaches a tense, agitated climax, similar to the works of SPK and friends in its percussive panic; when this subsists, the guitar achieves dominance, and the track morphs into an acoustic (neo-)folk lament as it segues towards its end.

There's nothing here that would appeal to the majority (or even to any one person for 100% of the time, most probably), but there is a rationale to its positioning alongside the first track, with the outwardly difference in modes of expression directing attention (by contrast) to their thematic similarity; hence, on this split, it is a fine inclusion.