The Silence of December

All those who praise modern necro suicidal black metal need to immediately listen to this record. Anyone who is in love with primitive as hell, sickly, and utterly abysmal metal music must obtain this album! One listen to the title track and I cannot see why anyone of such taste would pass this album up… aside from the use of keyboards.

The first 3 albums by Deinonychus are so fantastic and thrilling. Each one is not only absolutely permeated with the demented, over-indulgent gloominess that trademark to their sound, but is also wholly a unique document of its evolution. And here on the very first, the sound is all juvenile passion, and gloriously so.

By any other standard, “The Silence of December” is an utter embarrassment, especially at the time of its creation. This next part is all personal impressions (I may be wrong) but it has the feel that this little personal for-fun project of the young Marco “Odin” was suddenly swept into a record deal by an enthusiastic new label and given the task of quickly coming up with a full length to be internationally published. That in a hurry, Odin grabbed together as much friends as he could to assist him and then spewed out a most foul and ugly little album complied of older songs, experiments, and hastily pasted together compositions. Moreso, these young men went into it with a blind gusto, assured that horrendous wails, over-reverbed drums, creepy synths , and shrieks as loud as possible was what constituted the conviction necessary for a truly evil, all killer metal album. That may or may not have been the real genesis behind “The Silence of Decenber”, but that is exactly how it feels.

Bands have put out crap recordings many times before, especially young acts like this one. I’ve heard more than enough to make me sick. Deinonychus though has brought to this album something new to black metal back at the time. In the lyric books he highlights the bands At the Gates, Emperor, Mayhem, Abruptum, Type-O-Negative, and even Dead Can Dance as influences. Its sort of possible to see where he got his ideas from, and yet how he compiled them together with his own ideas is a serendipitous success. Unable to competently play the drums fast enough to make for good blacks or to keep up with any of his idols, Odin instead found it more satisfying to enhance the mid-pace range, and bring in a slow as hell doom metal sound to “The Silence of December”. In addition, he poured into all this doom gothic synths and ultra-negative, pseudo-romantic, lyrics vomited out by his deep, wailing, blood-soaked cries of despair. Then throw in a few shrill rain/bonfire samples and monotonous, dull prodding clean guitar fills all over the place, and the end result is something truly special, something that would come to contribute to the future of black metal as it is today. Bands like Wedard, Striborg, Anti, Xasthur, and especially Leviathan and Gris can be found in “The Silence of December”. How is it that I do not see this album lauded over by fans of such artists??? Is is the synth use? The fact it was on a professional label? I swear to god! If you listen to any of these bands, listen to “Silence of December” and tell me you do not hear the same suicidal spirit! Well I will say that this music does a lot more for me than any of those other projects.

I burned the last of my teakwood incense to Deinonychus. Watching the smoke trail up lazily from a tar covered carved wooden burner, smelling an air of aroma like a weathered old wooden house burning to the ground, I listen to this music and am transported. Once a long time ago, I visited a very old cabin recessed into the mountainside. Most of this structure was completely overgrown with plant life and viney tendrils so thick that they actually emerged through crevices and bloomed in the interior space of the building. Inside was a large room with a fireplace made from large rocks of quartz cemented primitively together. And one wall was the stone surface of the mountain. The whole air smelled of wet soil inside it, because recessed in one wall was an actual spring well, dripping water from between wet rocks and into a long black pool below. The room was lit by oil lamps, and I was never more enchanted by a location in my life. It was so dank, mossy, organic, and earthen… bathed in darkness of the hollows it inhabited. I could not imagine how amazing nights would be in such a place. Light a little candle and put it in the cobwebbed window, maybe see the field bathed in pale blue moonlight behind the orange glow. Deinonychus’s music for me occupies this hearth and hollow in my memories. To put on “The Silence of December” is to step out into a rainy fall forest at night and bury yourself in the soggy wet leaves. I am filled with the urge to fall to the ground at the base of a tree and feel my bare hands dig and scrape the black soil. To the earth I wish to go. Discard all the plastic and modern, purge the shallow and superficial, and revel in ecstasy my newfound home alone where the spirit is free and the drossy wilderness is Arcadia. All hail this romantic rot!

Over the course of their next two albums, Deinonychus would evolve this sound until its sophisticated perfection on “Ark of Thought”. But never does “The Silence of December” feel like a lesser example of that album. Like “The Weeping of a Thousand Years” it is too unique in its own right to be regarded as such. It has more obvious black metal themes, more clean guitar, more funeral doom, more youthful energy and aggression, and even a fair bit of humor in its primitive charm. This album is a masterpiece and an example of what will be the future of black metal. And to anyone who likes suicidal or doomish black metal, this album is a MUST listen, for it laid the groundwork for what your favorite bands are doing today.