Dark Space -II

Darkspace is a vehicle for the impressive mind of Tobias Möckl, aka Wroth, aka Wintherr, the man behind Paysage d'Hiver and one of, if not the, premier exponent of frigid, frost-bitten atmospheric black metal, whether it be via the narrative journey of Paysage d'Hiver's Traveller through blizzard-riven forests or Darkspace's exploration of the icy voids of interstellar space.

It has been a decade since Darkspace last released any new material, while Wroth concentrated on Paysage d'Hiver, writing and recording the project's masterpiece Im Wald and then it's follow-up, Geister. Now that he has reached some sort of resolution with P d'H, he has been able to focus on Darkspace and this latest work, Dark Space -II. I think the minus 2 nomenclature is significant and places this latest piece before the very earliest Darkspace releases in the project's overall aesthetic timeline. This makes absolute sense, as it builds on elements from the early days, with Dark -1.0 from the first EP seemingly the base upon which the new album's sole track, Dark -2.-2 is built, the earlier work's ideas being expounded upon, resulting in an expansive forty-seven minutes reworking of it's icy ambience.

The track begins with an emotionless female voice intoning scientific or philosophical theses over ambient keys, which continues throughout the entirety of the piece, but comes to the fore as an introduction and during an interval between the piece's two major "acts". After a few minutes, this ambient introduction is joined by programmed drums and a chugging, chunky, industrialised guitar riff that is reminiscent of the one used on the track Dark 1.2 from the 2003 debut full-length and which here sounds similar to the riff of Rammstein's Links 1-2-3-4. This industrial-sounding riff and the monotone way the spoken words are delivered sees Wroth exploring a different kind of coldness here, with reference to emotional frigidity in addition to his usual dissection of merely physical iciness, illustrating perfectly how the two can be equally debilitating. Eventually his own desperate shrieks and subdued black metal riffing join the fray, although they are deliberately buried down in the mix so as to merely add a further layer to the already-established ambient texture rather than taking centre stage and leading the way.

Around twenty minutes in, the riff subsides and we are treated to an interval of sorts with the spoken word outpourings of our female companion on this interstellar trip once more moving to centre stage. A portentous piano theme then takes up the reins, joined by droning guitar chords and a deeper, gruffer vocal that is once more buried such that it acts more as a textural addition than any kind of narrative device. This second act does see some slow progression and does feature some slight building of atmosphere, right up to the piece's ultimate release which sees the return of the opening act's chugging industrialised riff for the finale and sees it ending in probably it's most "metal-sounding" section.

The overall effect of Dark Space -II's subjugation of the black metal elements in favour of the more ambient and textural, sees the band using the toolbox of black and industrial metal to produce what is essentially a drone metal album which has more in common with early Earth or Nadja than any resemblance to more traditional atmospheric black metal. Now I'm not sure how this will be received by the usual fans of Darkspace, although Wroth has dabbled in this more textural style before, but for myself as a lover of quality atmospheric drone metal, I can see many analogies between that style and what Darkspace have delivered here with Dark Space -II and I found it to be a riveting experience with a refreshing approach to drone metal.

With the departure of bassist Zorgh back in 2019, and her replacement by Yhs in 2022, the mighty Swiss trio Darkspace have chosen to go right back to their early demo "Darkspace – I" and strike a new path from there with their fifth studio album "Darkspace – II". Accordingly, "Darkspace – II" has the feel of a new adventure, starting with soft airy white-noise ambience and a whispery monologue over which droning guitar and synthesiser ready themselves for lift-off and ascent into a different part of the cosmos. The riffs begin their long chugging warm-up and distant pounding synth drums start their countdown to the moment when the Darkspace juggernaut finally leaves Earth. A second series of percussive beats increases the anticipation and the tension within the music as long droning guitar chords waver and, for several moments, hold back the music from proceeding further to take-off.

When the music does push back and continues its long build-up, deep gravelly voices, more sensed than heard, start carving out sinister forms within the shimmering silver guitar dronescapes and the clashing, thumping percussion. An ambient break where sonic flotsam and jetsam float aimlessly, and the spoken monologue continues in the background appears around the 19th minute and allows us some relief from the intense, almost maniacally obsessive music. The journey then resumes and carries on with its stretch towards the farthest reaches of space.

On this album, the black metal element has been dialled right back to a point where the guitars spend nearly all their time revving up or idling while lead guitar solos shriek overhead and layers of droning synth create and maintain a vast sprawling orchestral backdrop. At times, most of the activity and direction are determined by the two parallel series of percussion while the guitars are on extended riff loops. The vocals are usually very subdued and muffled under dense chugging layers of guitar riffs and hard brittle percussion beats.

Although the gradual escalation and elaboration of this particular chapter in the Darkspace saga are impressive technically, and the music can be very spellbinding in parts, compared to previous Darkspace work "Darkspace – II" has very little excitement and exhilaration, and it comes across as a drearily repetitive, monotonous and even exhausted recording. The spark and liveliness of earlier recordings are nowhere to be found. The shifts in pace and rhythm, the variety in the riffing, buoyed by the blast-beat drumming, and the feverish, frenzied screaming that were typical of earlier Darkspace albums are absent.

Of course, I realise that Darkspace (by necessity perhaps) are in a process of reinvention by stripping down the elements that made their music distinctive originally and are reconstructing and recasting their style into something else – but I fear that the trio may have hit a deep void in their new travels and might be stuck in a creative black hole.

Tobias Möckl’s career is essential for understanding the mechanism by which black metal was recast as an aesthetic pursuit. A paragon of third wave black metal, through his flagship projects Paysage d’Hiver and Darkspace he has cranked out a body of work notable for lifting the dense, blasting, frigid mien of Nordic black metal and transposing it into a purely ambient space. This is soundscape metal. The promise of total immersion through textural manipulation and recording techniques alone. Performance and composition are incidental if not entirely disposable.

In particular, his solo work as Paysage d’Hiver has shifted the definition of canonical black metal. The mixing desk and effects pedal are inserted into the compositional armoury with as much emphasis as riffs and melodic construction. The uniqueness of this project lay in taking this idea to such an extreme that instruments at times were indistinguishable from one another, vocals bled into guitar distortion, drums were lost to static, and synth lines felt like random, sui generis epiphenomena. A wash of uncanny noise overwhelms the listener with information as indecipherable as it is disorientating.

In this sense, Möckl differs from an Ildjarn insofar as he is a noise artist communicating through the raw materials of black metal. Whereas Ildjarn, despite being the second wave’s most radical outlier, remained within the same mindset as his former bandmates who gave the world ‘In the Nightside Eclipse’. It is on this point that many of today’s self proclaimed artisans of experimental black metal misunderstand their true designation. They are first and foremost soundsmiths and soundscapers, and composers second, or sometimes not at all, and as a result have very little say about black metal the genre.

Whilst Paysage d’Hiver was not the first artist to foreground ambience in black metal, they were certainly its apex, and the malaise haunting contemporary black metal can partly be attributed to younger artists misconstruing the mechanics behind Paysage d’Hiver’s craft. Noise artistry is cheap to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can’t. Treating musicianship and composition as background features still requires an intimacy with the theory and techniques underpinning them. Musicians with an understanding of the rules and guidelines are often the most adept at knowing when and how to break them.

It’s not only the 21st Century generation that has forgotten this truism. Möckl himself seems to be slowly degrading his talent for unpicking the spirit of black metal and placing it within a static, enveloping monotony of noise ambience. This is apparent both in the lacklustre output of Paysage d’Hiver following the high watermark of ‘Das Tor’ in 2013, and through his more popular collaboration as Darkspace with longtime running mate Zhaaral.

The very concept of Darkspace (what if black metal but in space) is demonstrative of the changing attitude and character within black metal from the early 2000s onwards. The flesh and bone of Darkspace adds nothing of note to the compositional toolkit of the genre. This is simply the process of repurposing preexisting techniques and theory to a new aesthetic framework. The guitars eschew communication through the language of riffs, becoming mere vehicles for washes of ambient noise. Keyboards plug the gaps by adding layers of minimal symphonics to greater emphasise that this is music as pure experience, light on substantive information. And of course the programmed drums and various ambient interludes lend everything an industrial, futurist veneer.

That Darkspace left black metal’s compositional fundamentals largely untouched was always apparent to discerning listeners. But even the shitmunchers are liable to clock that something is awry with the release of ‘Dark Space -II’. The reason for this is simple. Darkspace have done everything in their power to make this album seem like it represents a clear break with the past. The change in naming convention, the decade gap, the shifting style of the cover art, the choice to structure it as one continuous, lengthy track. Despite all this however, and some cosmetic adjustments to the music, to quote Theresa May, “nothing has changed”.

The understated return, with a slow, building overture, navigated by a single repetitive, chugging guitar line, pulsing rhythms, and gradually building keys, this, again, consists of the same basic components as previous Darkspace efforts, here re-arranged in a way that was clearly intended to be received as daring or otherwise experimentally bold.

‘Dark Space -II’ is our clearest evidence yet that Möckl never really developed his own musical style. He is, as discussed, primarily a manipulator of sound and texture. The guitar line, despite its peaks and troughs, is about as complex as the average Rammstein riff. The simple, pulsing drumbeat mimicking the kinetic energy of machinery is typical of industrial music since the early 1980s. The standardised synth backing creates the illusion of scale to compensate for the limitations in the writing.

None of this is to say that ‘Dark Space -II’ is without worth. As a piece of minimal industrial or dark ambient it has some value, although aficionados of these styles will be put off by the over reliance on hooks and rhythmic accessibility, presumably deployed to engage a broader audience. Ultimately however, this latest chapter is more interesting for what it reveals about Möckl as an artist over the substance of the album itself. Namely that – whether consciously or not – he understands black metal through the lens of aesthetic and textural flourishes (reaching its apex with ‘Das Tor’), and as a result is unable or unwilling to effectively communicate through the language of genre, instead opting to drape superficial stylistic elements over readymade off-the-shelf compositional techniques.

Whilst this approach bore limited fruit for a time, Darkspace, especially in their current state, are more than a harmless intrigue. The fact that this artist has dressed up their modest showroom of dark pop industrial furniture to look like a conceptually dense monolith reveals that much. Möckl clearly thinks highly of his contributions to the advancement of black metal, believing it to be pulling the genre into new expressive arenas. But with the latest episode, it’s clear that his efforts fail to even communicate in the genre’s language, let alone interject novel contributions.

Originally published at Hate Meditations