Despair

When the world put itself on hold last year, many artists were forced to reassess their plans. Unfortunately there have already been many casualties along the way, the silver lining being a surge in introspective art, reaching deep into the bowels of the human condition. Equally promising have been those acts who were already on life support but have since taken the opportunity to reappraise their output to date, and once more offer it to an audience more captive than they’re ever likely to be, free from the distractions of gigging and rigid major label release cycles.

Such is the case for Wuhan’s The Illusion of Dawn. Who, since their self-titled debut back in 2012 have struggled to maintain an existence owing to frequent shifts in clientele. But 2021 sees them spring into life once again with the release of the compilation ‘Despair’, which pulls together their early material and their first demo ‘Recall the Nightmare’ (2008).

The music itself ranges from sentimental iterations of black metal with mournful, cold chord progressions and plodding drum beats through to Darkthrone circa ‘Under a Funeral Moon’, displaying malevolent tritone play and a dogged commitment to raw minimalism. Production is about as raw as they come, with a tinny but atmospheric guitar tone, sans bass, with percussion limited to snare and kick drum, any cymbals that may be present lose themselves in the static of the guitars. But the performance itself is a basic and serviceable metronome, sticking to the credo that for this style of raw, minimal black metal anything too elaborate in the percussive department is a detriment to the artwork taken as a whole.

Each tracks trades on exchanges between simple chord progressions, utilising the inertia of the guitar tone to layer up the cold, wintry atmosphere of each piece. The tempo remains relatively slow throughout, with blast-beats kept to a lackadaisical pace, serving to give this music the impression that it is functioning out of time, at a different pace and in a different space to our mundane lives.

The high pitched, passionate wail of the vocals invokes a strong feeling of solitude. A distant, mournful cry from the wilderness. The underlying static inherent in demo quality black metal such as this lends itself to music attempting to invoke snowy landscapes and the vastness of the natural world beyond human legislation. Blizzards ultimately function as a visual representation of the sound of static, the logical conclusion to the arms race of abrasion inherent in black metal timbres. When guitar leads do cut across the fog they are surprisingly grounded in familiar melodic forms, as if to offer the listener a lifeline of warmth in this otherwise icy musical experience.

Pulling together the differing approaches found in lo-fi black metal of a particularly cold bent, somehow soothing in its abrasion, The Illusion of Dawn offer up an understated character of their own despite the obvious references to the many scenes around the world that have adopted this style. Whether it’s the atonal, two chord riffs of Ildjarn or Paysage d’Hiver style pathos, The Illusion of Dawn are very much at home within these wintry landscapes of snow, rock, and wind.

Originlly published at Hate Meditations