A Kiss in the Charnel Fields

The name choice already shows an inclination towards originality and avantgardism, regardless of whether the guys had been left enchanted by Anthony Burgess' dystopian masterpiece "Clockwork Orange", or Stanley Kubrick's hallucinogenic, surreal cinematic rendition of it. Many musicians would be sadly unable to match their suggestive "tell-tale" names, but in this case the band had done a marvellous job, and had probably enticed a dozen of fans to enlarge their sparse Russian vocabulary with one more word...

Austrian metal was condemned to remain buried deep underground during metal's golden period despite the efforts of the death metal innovators Disharmonic Orchestra to make a few heads turn towards their homeland. Abigor managed to make a name for themselves during the 90's with a string of high quality albums, and can be rightfully considered one of the most prominent representatives of the Second Wave of Black Metal. Their success in this field brought a few other acts (Dornenreich, etc.) to the fore, but it was the gothic/doom metal wave which put Austria more prominently on the world metal map with capable outfits like Dreams of Sanity, Siegfried, and Angizia. And, this digression can't possibly miss out on the country's best kept musical secret, the symphonic death metallers Hollenthon whose three full-lengths so far are meisterwerks of intelligent, engaging, multifarious music (think mid-period Therion for a close soundalike).

It's highly unusual for a music act to have only official releases listed in their discography, and not a single demo, or a rehearsal recording mentioned. Well, the guys obviously had very big confidence in their skills, and as it turned out in their case, for a very good reason. "A Kiss in the Charnel Fields" is a consummate offering, an encompassing technical/progressive death metal opera with unobtrusive shades of black and a few more avantgarde decisions taken from the not very well shaped at the time gothic/doom metal scene, mostly expressed in short operatic, keyboard-driven sweeps. The resultant mix is very melodic taking Nocturnus's "The Key" and Therion's first two albums as a base the musical dramatism enriched by a frequent alternation between romantic clean and husky black-ish vocals this infernal "duel" intercepted by casual angelic female inclusions.

The opener "After the Fruits of Ephemeral Pulchritude" is a weird diverse opus with plenty of melodic hooks and puzzling riffs providing the template to be followed by the rest of the album. "Lachrydeus Mittelgard (Slâhan fôntagr inn awêþi)" follows the trend with a more atmospheric delivery and more frequent faster-paced passages on which the guitars "quarrel" with ethereal keyboards. "Entlebt in tristem Morgenblut" begins like a chapter from Coroner's "No More Color" with some ingenious technical riffs the latter later growing into a formidable wall of perplexing stop-and-go rhythms infused with great melodic tunes, not to mention the imposing orchestral exit near the end. "Awakening from Perpetual Contemplation (Yellow Mahogany Tomb I)" is a wild chaotic death metal extravaganza which blasting aesthetics may come as a complete surprise having in mind the sophisticated approach before it; still, this number remains a winner with its meandering structure and the excellent clean vocals.

"Latin Dreams in Turpentine" is an operatic take on rock'n roll, the apparent joke track here, but "Nordsciltim-In the Filth Where All Cull Perambulates Pain" is a completely different story, a larger-than-life progressive death metal opera with hard-hitting riffs served in an impetuous galloping manner before being superseded by brutal stylish blasts and a portion of vitriolic, chaotic leads. "Sálømeh, des Teufels Braut" begins in a soporific, elegiac fashion, but the guys start shredding with aggression not soon after, and this composition can pass for the most energetic one despite its mellower symphonic character in the second half, and the closing morose balladisms. Comes the final title-track, the longest cut here, and its surreal twisted beginning forebodes niceties of the Gorguts or Pestilence flavour, but this is where the band have disclosed their biggest fascination with both gothic and black metal leaving the dominant technical/progressive death metal tendencies in the background. The spacey, oblivious keyboard-infused hyper-blasts, though, are a wonder to listen to, an innovative implement, before the times when the latter tool would become a regular presence on the metal fan's menu due to acts like Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Marduk, etc.

In terms of originality this album scores very high seeing a young act bravely venturing into an eventful amalgam of styles not exactly attempted before in the same form. This is the more diversified and flamboyant version of Nocturnus' "The Key" and Therion's "Beyond Sanctorum" enlarged to almost cosmic proportions thus making a summary of all the trendy sub-genres at the time. Mind-scratching riff-patterns alternating with sudden keyboard crescendos, esoteric atmospherics, and spasmodic blast-beating passages; this "cacophony" topped by those unique contrasting vocal "duels"... by all means this was too hard to swallow at first listen by the untrained at the time ears. Even their compatriots Hollenthon's debut album, which appeared four years later, didn't offer as many facets of music, and so impeccably entwined into a wholesome canvas. Its ethereal far-reaching progressive escapades were later heard on the works of the Swedish visionaries Theory in Practice, and another avantgarde metal formation, the Norwegians Ram-Zet, on their 2005 album "Intra"; not many were those enticed to follow along this not very well trodden path...

Even Korova themselves were not adventurous enough to pursue this direction. Actually, they had some material written as an immediate follow-up to the "Kiss...", but it was rejected by the labels and was never released. This may have prompted the change of name which was upgraded to Korovakill, and also the shift in style on their next instalment, "Dead Like an Angel", three years later. The music on this one moved towards the more fashionable at the time gothic/black metal hybridization that Cradle of Filth were advertising far'n wide, only without the Brits' hyper-active blasting extremities. Needless to add, the technical pyrotechnics were almost completely removed the band barely recognizable thanks to the keyboard sweeps and the lush atmospherics which this time played a more important role backed up by much more conventional, and not very exciting, riff-patterns.

A small part of their audacious musicianship returned for their third effort "Waterhells" (2001) which was an acceptable eclectic form of post-black metal without any technical/progressive death metal exploits. It was by all means more interesting than its predecessor, but by the time it saw the light of day the guys had already moved on with other, more commercially viable or rather more accessible, projects (Dornenreich, Angizia, etc.), and this was the final chapter from Korova's career. The band mainman Christof Niederwieser resurrected the band's experimental spirit with his latest outfit Chryst where he is responsible for everything on their only so far release "PhantasmaChronica" (2011). The mentioned everything is an appetizing concoction of chaotic, at times quite technical, death/black metal which is more scattered ideas-wise than the album reviewed here, but could very well serve as a template for a new exciting career. The delivery is quite erratic, even psychotic, varying considerably from one song to another, but by all means looks back in nostalgia at the band's beginnings when "milking" the cows after a pasture on those "charnel fields" was equal to creating a truly memorable piece of music which would stand the test of time even when measured with the most precise Austrian... sorry, Swiss clockwork mechanisms.