Inferno

I think John Gill hates music in general. There’s really nothing else that explains a person with such obvious compositional skills putting out music such as Black Tribe. It seems to me that has a genuine malice towards the audience, such that even if he put out ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’ part two he would stick a thirty minute noise track on the end specifically to irritate people. I’d say that such genuine resentment towards art actually stirs some primitive part of me; probably the same part that finds Anal Cunt enjoyable.

Because in all logical respects, Black Tribe is totally wretched music. There’s nothing to rationalize the existence of something like ‘Inferno’. It’s an insult towards music and any notion of quality or artistic relevance. It’s laced with utter pretense and a lack of any use beyond demonstration of where black metal is these days. And yet I find it engaging. Perhaps my liking it is a premptive strike against Gill, who made this with the utter intention of it being horrible. I almost feel a responsibility to combat his reverse psychology; we could go through infinite layers of ‘did he stumble upon quality or did he just want it to look so’, but that wouldn’t function as much more than an ego trip.

Hell, ‘Inferno’ can’t even really be properly described as black metal. It’s a clumsily grafted combination of raw BM, noise, ambient, industrial, and whatever other influences popped into Gill’s head the day he wrote a given track. It’s all ridiculously lo-fi; the guitars are nothing but a wall of shifting noise with no tonal or melodic properties to speak of. Drums (which sound programmed but are too clumsily played to be so) are harsh barks and pops of ancient snares and cymbals. Vocals are distorted beyond all recognition except on the occasional spoken passage, such as on the title track. The only reasonably clear sound comes from the sporadic keyboards that form a breadcrumb trail of melody that winds through the music. And, of course, all instruments are played with no technical skill or seemingly any experience.

But there seems to be a craftwork in these tracks that isn’t frequently seen. Despite how noisy and chaotic it sounds, Gill obviously created ‘Inferno’ with a large measure of care. The keyboard melodies are too delicate and subtle to have been randomly placed, the slow-burning disassembly of ‘Inferno’ is too engineered. It seems almost as though Gill wanted to appear rawer and, well, worse than he actually is, when his structure is genuinely multifaceted. Perhaps it’s been designed this way, forcing one to peel back the layers of brutal aesthetic to find the beauty underneath. The atmosphere is carefully cultivated, at once microcosmic yet apocalyptic; remarkable for such an ostensibly ‘simple’ release.

Of course, this is all assumption on my part. Perhaps ‘Inferno’ is just as simple as it appears at first glance. But I suppose the perceptions are what really matter.