Thelésis Ignis

Danish death metal group Tongues have recently released their debut EP through I, Voidhanger Records. Taking on the currently popular abyssal death metal sound, but with an ugly old school aesthetic and a dose of black metal darkness they’ve put out an enjoyable, if not particularly original take on the genre.

Dissonant guitar chords weighed down by a huge trebly guitar tone, punchy mid paced drums and deep guttural vocals on first track Void Meditation make for an interesting plodding intro. Moving in the middle of the track into more of an OSDM vibe, switching between blasts and d-beats, with slow twisted guitar solos with a messily distorted trebly tone in black metal fashion it builds well, and . evolving further into slower doomy passages, its particularly despondent sounding, and for a ten minute track it’s really well paced and doesn’t drag at all.

Second track WIll of Fire has more of that ugly trebly riffage in a lo-fi black metal track which sounds like a cross over between Soulside Journey and Under a Funeral Moon from Darkthrone, weighed down by the depths of the low, abyssal bass. Punchy drums and simple chunky riffage would make it the best track here, but it tails off during the interlude and never really picks itself back up afterwords, a shame.

Third track Last Grip of the Hand of Guilt has more of that slow doomy dissonance, but for the first few minutes it doesn’t really go anywhere, with the riffs at a very similar tempo. But an incisive vocal performance keeps you interested, and when that burst of speed comes in at the middle of the track with a brilliantly ugly guitar tone and blastbeats combining into a blazing maelstrom of sound it’s one of the highlights of the EP.

Closer Bloodline of the Blind is a dark ambient piece with eerie throat singing that echoes against the creepy backdrop, and those vocals are good enough to elevate it over most ambient pieces on metal releases. Overall the EP has some great moments, but it’s let down by some unfocused songwriting. If they can improve that on the next release then they’re going to be great.

Originally written for swirlsofnoise.com

Tongues' debut EP Thelésis Ignis is among the latest in a recent trend of void-related observations in black metal. The nihilistic implications of a 'total emptiness' are unsurprisingly attractive to the murkier depths of the genre. Interestingly enough, whenever a image of a void or abyss is evoked, it usually manifests itself similarly in the music. For US harbingers Void Meditation Cult (I seem impelled to mention them, if only for their nomenclatorial similarity to one of the tracks here), it was felt in the unexpectedly resonant atmosphere behind their otherwise blunt wall of aggression. In most other ways, Tongues offers a considerably different approach in their music, but that empty-yet-simultaneously-vast atmosphere gives Thelésis Ignis a familiar sense of abandon.

Clocking in at just over half an hour, Tongues introduction via I, Voidhanger offers a substantive-enough taste of the band, without spoiling anticipation for lengthier works to come. Although drawing primarily from a well of twisted lo-fi black metal (think a muffled incarnation of some of the modern Mayhem's avant-garde passages, and you're close), with doomy stretches and (as seen most clearly in the EP's final track) ritual ambient music. The blend shouldn't be unfamiliar to those with a taste for this sort of left-of-field black metal, but Tongues pull it off with enough conviction to be worth checking out.

Thorbjørn's riffs are swirling and often atonal; I wouldn't hesitate to make comparisons with Si Monvmentum...-era Deathspell Omega, had Tongues had greater favour in sonic clarity. As it is, many of the guitar ideas here are fairly inventive within the prescribed limits of the genre, but I'm left thinking that some of the potential of these riffs has been lost in Tongues' lo-fi shroud. There's no doubt that a murky production ultimately works to the benefit of the album's overall atmosphere, but I'm sure the lo-fi authenticity could have been retained while paying greater heed to detail in the performance. For example's sake, Bölzer's Soma from earlier this year was similarly cavernous, but never let it impede the nuance and tone of the guitars. Thelésis Ignis is recorded and mixed with appropriate regards to the genre's expectations, but Tongues haven't quite realized the potential a more meticulous execution could have offered their style.

I'm still a little torn with regards to the quality of Tongues' songwriting as a whole. While Thelésis Ignis demonstrates internal coherence and is awash with individually solid ideas, the structure and flow of their compositions never seem to build impetus. The pace rises and falls between weirdly atonal and aggressive sections and their doomier counterparts, with varying success. The opener "Void Meditation" has a strong atmosphere (complete with ominous gong toll) but the mudded structure robs it of a lot of its potential catharsis and memorability. "The Will of Fire" is easily the best example of Tongues' black metal, with an addictive central riff that entirely warrants the aforementioned Deathspell comparison. "Last Grip of the Hand of Guilt" offers a much doomier side to Tongues' sound; while nowhere near as compelling as "The Will of Fire", it demonstrates a potential for patience that will work to the band's favour with their future ambient exploits. Lastly, but certainly not least of all is "Bloodline of the Blind", the album's closer and- without a doubt- the strangest, most unexpected offering on the EP. Thelésis Ignis' final episode is devoted completely to ambiance; a throaty monotone enunciates atop the minimal tones of an organ, all spruced by a cavernous resonance that completely pulls me in, in a way the rest of the album fell short of. The slow build of the organ is subtle enough to escape less attentive listens, but the gradual surge makes it all the more foreboding. Like an elegy to human civilization circa post-apocalypse, "Bloodline for the Blind" is an incredible ambient passage. For my sake, I hope they continue to make more ambient-oriented tracks in the future.

Thelésis Ignis is a strong EP, but there are enough faults and weakpoints to write up a considerable list of things I hope to hear improved on future releases from Tongues. All of the essential ingredients for potentially great black metal are already here, and if Tongues make that push to improve, they'll be a force to be reckoned with.

Originally written for Heathen Harvest Periodical

Unwilling to conceal themselves completely under one genre or the other, Denmark's Tongues straddle the border between the death and black metal genres, the former coming through largely in the growled vocals, the latter via the blasted drumming element and spurts of rollicking, warlike chords whipped up into a frenzy I imagined to be redolent of the mid 90s fervor of a number of their European forebears, whether as 'A-list' as Mayhem or lesser revolutionary like Belgium's Enthroned. What separates this duo from the usual grist for the mill, however, is the very organic tone which they've applied to their guitars, as well as the atmospheric and wildly unpredictable liberties taken within their compositions. Obeying the rules here, shattering them elsewhere, Thelésis Ignis is, if not a masterpiece, then at least a lesson in see-sawing between expectations and experimentation.

It's not so avant-garde as to slap you in the face, but Tongues likes to fuck around with both purely ambient passages and those created by dropping out the steady thrum of metallic percussion to let a few guitars drudge on in desolate oblivion, or to implement all these strange, atonal zipping guitars and dissonant chords which don't always seem to align themselves so closely with the firmer rhythm guitar riffs found elsewhere in the tracks. Not to mention how the vocals bounce back and forth between the aforementioned guttural, lots of layered howls, trad black metal rasps and then some really gruesome exhibitions of excess as early as the first tune "Void Meditation", a 10-minute piece through which most of the ideas I've already mentioned are cycled, but was also ironically the one I enjoyed the least here. "The Will of Fire" has more a more compelling, irreverent structure where the riffs are a lot more interesting, the vocals meshed into these patterns where they howl above the fray like someone having left a window open at night in a hillside asylum when the wind picked up. "Last Grip of the Hand of Guilt" pursues a more disjointed, doom-laden pace with these huge backing guitars that fuzz out at the top of their frequencies...

And the closer, "Bloodline of the Blind" is this yawning, apocryphal ambient piece with droning, deep vocal incantations and a wonderfully wrought palette of backing sounds, steady drips and tones that seem as if I'm listening to them in some extradimensional cathedral. That deep gut-felt vocal does grow monotonous, but that was actually hands down my favorite part of the album, to the point that I almost wished they'd distributed more of this ambient bliss throughout the longer metal cuts. But either way, Thelésis Ignis is far more interesting than your usual cut & paste Scandinavian black/death, with a resonant, fulfilling but unnerving production to it which doesn't necessarily obscure it's more subtle touches, but gives you plenty to think about on multiple listens. The riffs were a little mixed in quality, some compelling and some blander and less rewarding, but I mentioned the two bands in the first paragraph for a good reason: if you enjoyed the weirder deviation the former explored on records like Ordo ad Chao/Esoteric Warfare, or the more recent, atmospheric iteration of the long-standing Belgian fiends, or maybe even some of the stranger output of the last decade's Swedish black metal orthodoxy, then these are Tongues worth wagging.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com