Dark Space -II

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