Ainulindalë

I received a dub of these guys' second demo "L'Ombre du Passe" ages ago, through some tape trade, and warmed up to the band's simple but prepossessing, Tolkien-meet-the-Celts, blackened culturological bent. The exultant and hummable, fantasyland melodic hook of the track "Au Poney Fringant" naturally lingered the most and, in some way, helped bring up to the surface the then-highly awkward conjecture that black metal could be something content, if not indeed happy. Since then, the gears have shifted rather drastically. Folk-metal blares out of every window these days, while Osgiliath's modest ambitions evaporated like morning dew, what with the band never getting past the stepping stone demo realm. The band's name, however, stuck, and on one fine day the first recording called "Ainulindale" found its way to my hard drive. Curiously enough, the impression I walked away with was a little different from what I could vaguely remember or expected, this time bringing to my mind the old German hypochondriacs Empyrium instead of a typical pagan-folk stuff people are accustomed to nowadays.

Granted, the Celts hung around during the band's earlier days as well, just in a more humble manner. Osgiliath's penchant for lengthy, meandering introspection and gothic melancholy on this demo is miles apart from the contemporary exuberance of many a modern folk-metal practitioner, with the folk parts generally allotted more of a back-up role in the overall mood. The opening title track is an exception, where wooden flute parts carry through the track's first half. Already on "Taure Anda Ar Laica", and the rest of material, flute "folkisms" are relegated to purely supportive, ornamental role, even when featured relatively prominently, as on the track "Gollum". Same goes for the blackened influence, which makes strictly regulated cameos (just about one per song), consisting of short segments, called upon to briefly shake up the rhythmically stale waters, along with a heeding listener or two, out of a wistful, reflective stupor. "Mithrandir" is the only track that attempts to flex a muscle and spur a horse for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, coming off as half-decent if underdeveloped pagan metal track. In that regard, the rest of the songs stick to the process of predominantly marinating in their own juices, though not necessarily with negative results, especially if one is predisposed towards this sort of grey, laid-back and atmospheric but folksy musical attitudes, introduced, aside from Empyrium and a handful of others, by, most notably, Ulver's debut album and taken to the bank later on by Agalloch and their followers, who eventually connected the dots all the way down to post-rock, sigh.

I do not happen to be the biggest proponent of post-rock dissemination upon the metal territories, although, of course, compelling works using this formula have been produced. Yet I generally prefer to "keep 'em separated", to quote The Offspring's popular tune. "Ainulindale", thankfully, was conceived way prior to the post-rock hysteria and can be heard as is, in a manner of speaking. It is a keyboard-heavy recording, and I stress that. They float all over the place and drive the songs' main motifs, while guitars simply back them up, aside from a few instances when some clean picking or something resembling a lead sheepishly come forward. The demo format carries with it a handful of the usual demo shortcomings, in this case mostly pertaining to production values and not entirely mature compositional solutions, which, however, are far from being utterly detrimental, even if "L'Ombre du Passe" did sound better, if I recall correctly. Vox are normally sung (and very often spoken) gothic declamations in French, beefed up with an occasional blackened rasp and light female lamentations. Main melodies, or rather harmonies - as there are few really proper melodies at hand - hold either an obvious folk simplicity, which contrasts well with the gothic, quasi-epic aspirations of the actual songs or stick with kind of semi-pagan, semi-fantasy (Tolkien influence is also here in droves), mildly symphonic and neo-classical synth flourishes (again, not totally unlike Empyrium). In fact, take away the Celtic flavor and replace the French language with German, chances are this bunch would have fit like a glove somewhere amidst Bavarian grasslands. Then again, if you did the opposite to Empyrium, not many would probably know the difference either, sigh.

I guess I am failing to clearly articulate why this band stuck with me. Back in a day I thought of "L'Ombre du Passe" as too simplistic and accessible to really like, but I would not admit to myself that I did, and it stuck regardless. And here I am years later, sitting around, absorbing its predecessor and finding myself attracted to it, despite the material at hand not always being well composed, rounded, so on and so forth, though I have no major complaints about, for example, its pacing with relation to its atmosphere. Yes, they should have paid more attention to the riff writing and incorporation thereof - not an uncommon problem for keyboard dominant recordings. But this one certainly works by virtue of its atmospheric faculties and created ambiance, a good example of which would be the last, above-noted track "Gollum". Osgiliath set up mood pieces sort of consisting of musical sleeves and pockets that do not really stand out on their own and have to kind of glide together close to the ground, in a pretty low-key fashion, which is when they tend to insidiously get absorbed by a listener. Or, to put it in a less tangible way, it is earnest naïveté-come-unfeigned self expression (or something like that), which trumps over the technical and sometimes even compositional shortcomings. Yes, the relatively primitive charm got to me and resonated with my own inner melancholy after having to endure one too many depressive BM miscarriages that usually attempt to do the same thing, just using a lot more distortion in the process but, on average, displaying less imagination. As for "Ainulindale", it was a pleasant listen one would not necessarily expect to come out of hands of several French urbanites from Saint-Etienne even today, much less back in the 90's.