RH-16

So this is the end, eh? I feel somewhat gloomy acknowledging that, two years after its release, this seems to have been definitively established as the swan song of Rhinocervs. I've had dreams where I Google "RH-17" only to find results detailing its upcoming release (and unfortunately, I'm only, like, 5% joking), but despite all my wishes and prayers and creepy emails to the label founders, I'm fairly sure that this right here is their final release as a collaborative entity that creates metal music. Perhaps it's the nature of the release itself which makes their dissolution so hard for me to swallow: RH-16 lacks the morose, moody feeling of previous Rhinocervs releases and pushes the project outside the box, leading to the creation of their most abstract material to date.

RH-16, generally speaking, revels in abstraction throughout its running time. There's a lot of dissonance, a lot of chaos, and a whole bunch of ideas that come from straight out of left field. One might say it sounds like Deathspell Omega's later works divorced from pretention and drenched in ambient overtones. It bears noting from the get-go that this is a very awkwardly-structured release. Side A is a vicious storm of two mid-length black metal songs, mixed with a much shorter ambient piece, but side B has one BM song and two short ambient compositions. The release definitely doesn't feel as evenly-paced as it should, and it could be argued that it blows its load early on and never fully recovers. For such a thematic release, that's a downside, but all-in-all the strength of the individual compositions makes RH-16 a more-than-worthwhile release. As the songs are too different to be effectively summarized with a couple of paragraphs, and because I have a lot to say about my pet label's valediction, I figure I might as well just cover the songs as they occur from beginning to end. There are only six of them, anyway.

The first track, packaged with its intro and outro, seems to be Yagian's brainchild, and is quite possibly the best ever released by Rhinocervs as an artistic collective. The tape opens with some absolutely amazing dark ambient - it's arhythmic, haunting and hazy, with vaguely-industrial sounds seeping in and out along with heaps of dissonance. The black metal enters in a way that seems like it's bursting free, erupting from a surge in the wall of sound, and once it does, it simply never relents. It's a monument to dread and horror like almost nothing else in the metal pantheon - seriously, I use this song to wake myself up in the morning. An interesting thing about this track is that the drum machine never sounds like it's keeping the beat so much as it's simply frantically blasting away at lightning speed, trying to keep up with the guitars. And the riffs on this song are absolutely insane - for the main riff, the guitars churn out a solid wave of minor second chords, creating a dissonant, infectious wall of sound that just kind of buzzes in the air like a vicious nanobot death swarm. A.'s vocals take a guttural, groaning approach à la Attila Csihar on this track, to great effect. The song shuffles through its four or five riffs masterfully, cycling from chaos to malevolence and then from malevolence to beauty in abrupt but fluid shifts. The final riff in the song is truly gorgeous: a malicious riff that sounds like the meaner side of Blut aus Nord gives way to a moving, romantic lick that sounds even more like Blut aus Nord (parallels could be drawn to the Memoria Vetusta series), which doodles away out of earshot with the blast beats following it out. A haunting clean guitar lead rises from the ensuing silence, playing a haunting bit of jangly folk as a sort of exiting fanfare. The fact that this song is placed right at the front of the release is in some ways a curse, as it sets a precedent that the rest of the release can hardly stand up to.

The second track, presumably written and recorded mostly by A., is a lot more straightforward than the first, and in a way this happens to be one of its strengths. The main riff is a bunch of churning low tremolo notes with dreamy, jangly single notes humming above them, and I personally love this style of riffs, so it definitely jives well with me. What makes it somewhat more unique is the fact that the song is structured in a very easily-palatable ABABCAB pattern without any ambient frills, leading to an odd combination of haunting abstraction with catchy pop sensibilities. The riffs in general remind me of Tukaaria on acid: the same style of overly-melodic chords and intervals, only a bit more panicked and generally "dropped on the head at birth"-like. The song has this utterly bizarre punk-influenced breakdown for a bridge, with super-bouncy bass and drums while dissonant guitars screech on top of them. It's delicious to listen to. This song makes a nice complement to the first, and I actually think the value of the release as a whole would increase were it only comprised of these first two tracks.

Track three is where the release starts to lose steam. It starts with some pretty but not-exactly-mindblowing echoing clean guitar diddling, which eventually segues into an utterly bizarre pile of pulsing and surging tones, arpeggios and tone clusters. It sounds like something Penderecki would compose, actually. Interesting for sure, but not really something that deserves to be called "good".

The fourth track is the last metal one on the release, and of those, it's by far the weakest on the album; but it's still quite good, and to its credit, it does something totally different from the other two on the album. It's an instrumental piece which spends a lot of its time at a mid-paced strut, letting dreamy, seemingly-improvised leads dance around over its repetitive and simple main riff. The overall effect isn't too far off from a marriage of DsO with the leads of BAN, though, again, a bit less pretentious. The song picks up a bit for its last minute or so, settling into a gallop with a fair bit more momentum. The lead over this part is actually quite nice, but as a whole, the song feels a bit half-baked, especially compared to the meticulously-constructed feeling that the first two tracks give off. The track kind of suffers from its total lack of vocals, and the fact that it basically only has two riffs. As presented, it's good, but I feel like it could've used a bit more time on the drawing board.

The fifth and sixth tracks, the final two, together form a solid four minutes of ambient. The fifth is hardly worth mentioning, being a weaker, somewhat more maudlin version of the third with its echoing, layered clean guitars. The sixth is actually kind of interesting, though perhaps not for the reason it should be: it's about as lowercase as ambient can get, to the point where the entire three minutes of its length is basically a minimalistic, dreamy tone that hums and pulses and then fades out of existence. I have a feeling most people will absolutely hate this track - although it provides substance to the release, most people will simply feel that there isn't nearly enough going on with it. The only non-constant element are some ominous creaks (croaks?) that intermittently rumble up through the haze. Personally, I think it makes a somewhat fitting denouement for Rhinocervs as a whole: an amorphous, vague, slow fading out of existence. Or maybe I just like Stars of the Lid too much to hate lazy ambient anymore, who knows.

I suppose what I'm trying to say with this overly analytical eulogy masquerading as a music review is that RH-16 ventures into new territory, even breaks some new ground for extreme metal in general, and that's why it's so unfitting as a final release. As for whether it's worth checking out: well, none of the tracks are bad, they're all good at worst, plus the first track might be one of the best songs ever, with the second trailing not too far behind it. And it's only 22 minutes, and brevity is a virtue... I say go for it. Even if you're not obsessed with it, I'm sure you'll find something to like here.

Recently some labels (Ajna Collective, Fallen Empire Records, Profound Lore) have started issuing or reissuing material by the bands of the Black Twilight Circle, a black metal network modelled on the old French Black Legions. I dunno what those labels will do when they come across this nameless duo who release their work under the Rhinocervs label using only that label's catalogue numbers to distinguish their releases from one another. Perhaps for convenience and to preserve the underground nature of these recordings, the labels will simply reissue them as they are, perhaps separately or as a box set, without insisting that these guys give their act a name.

This latest mystery missive from the Rhinocervs label, simply named after its catalogue number like all its predecessors (which in the past haven't released in strict numerical order although now most recent work has been), features a mix of horrifyingly malevolent dark space ambient / BM psychedelia. The atmosphere is immediately frightening and desolate: it punches you in the gut straight off and then pounds you continuously and without mercy. Though the production is basic and often very raw and blunted, at times the music's sound can be surprisingly clear and beautiful in a sinisterly bewitching way (especially so on the short second track which is just jangly solo lead guitar). On some tracks, the lead guitar is dark and echoing in a way that suggests a weird and deranged combination of 1960s surf music, Satanism and astral BM.

It often sounds very rock'n'roll and punky in parts, most often when lead guitar dominates the scrabbly, careening frenzy that passes for music. Drums tick away furiously and the rhythm guitar is a deep steamy presence. Vocals are especially maddened and maddening in their total derangement. Just when you think you can't take any more chaos, a short quiet mouse-like piece is introduced into the darkness; if anything, this track can send you even more barmy because you're waiting for a daemon attack to come out of a far wormhole and slam into this quivering sequence of squiggle tones, and sweep it far into the cosmic catacombs. Later parts of the recording spread into doom metal territory and nightmarish drone soundscapes for a Gothic horror film.

I definitely think the first half of the release is far better than the second half just for the deathly ambient sheen and the demented psychedelic style of BM on the first couple of tracks. It's very nauseous and listeners will really feel their strength and will to live being sapped away. Apart from that, and the raw energy and bleakness that emanate from the music - it oddly reminds me of Finnish BM act Circle of Ouroborus on speed - these Rhinocervs guys don't introduce anything much that's new. The entire recording takes up just under 22 minutes which is short enough to be heard in one sitting ... but also long enough for the duo to consider structuring the music into a more unified whole than it is, so that it does not sound top heavy as it does here.