Metafyysinen k​ä​sitys itsestä

Nearly five years have passed since I had a fleeting acquaintance with Finnish duo Vihameditaatio's music on their first demo release, when they presented as an atmospheric / experimental BM project with noisy power electronics tendencies. Since then, these guys have established a distinct and unique niche in experimental BM noise psychedelia, releasing another demo, an EP and an album that all but snuck under my radar. Fortunately, I just managed to catch the duo's second album "Metafyysinen Käsitys Itsestä" (translating into Google English as "Metaphysical Understanding of Myself") before the 5-year deadline passed me by.

Vihameditaatio's music strongly reminds me of that other Finnish experimental BM duo Circle of Ouroborus in style, song composition, dark moody ambience and even the shouty vocals – but unlike CoO, these guys add psychedelic musical influences that sometimes result in the music sounding a bit closer to yet another Finnish lot Oranssi Pazuzu. (Since I have a soft spot for both Circle of Ouroborus and Oranssi Pazuzu, I admit to surprise and puzzlement that Vihameditaatio's releases have until now eluded me.) "Totuuden Luuranko" ("Skeleton of Truth") gets the album off to a bleak and depressed start with deliberately discombobulating and watery keyboard melodies and effects, and bleary off-key guitar riffs topped by harsh shouting voices filled with pain. A dark depressed urban world dominated by personal torment and hopelessness, pushed close to the edge of mental breakdown by mind-altering substances, blooms into being when you shut your eyes. "Yksi Tie Yhteyteen" ("One Way to Connect") which follows is more BM in its style and sharp raw sound but is not otherwise very different in presenting despairing music, a distinct spaced-out ambience and vocals that proceed more in parallel with each other than flow together.

Song titles like "Dysforinen Kliimaksi" ("Dysphoric Climax") "Kaikkeuden Kaiku" ("The Echo of the Universe") and "Hohtavan Palatsin Juurella" ("At the Foot of the Shining Palace") suggest a fixation with finding one's place in the cosmos, and perhaps purpose as a result, with the help (or not) of hallucinogenic drugs that can relax the mind's internal barriers and inhibitions to allow mental processes to wander and make unexpected discoveries that can result in self-discovery and transformation. The problem though is that self-discovery and transformation might result in very real spiritual danger and corruption.

With each subsequent track, starting with "Kaikkeuden Kaiku", the music becomes more and more eccentric with strange vibrating drones and spiky twangy guitar melodies that drip strong acid juice, and the atmosphere is even more bleached-out delirious and sultry. In "Mantra Lysergiseen Kuiluun", the singing becomes screechy and tortured as the vocalist seems on the verge of disappearing into an alternate world of chaos, and the music (by now barely in touch with its dark urban beginnings) rages through a noisy BM grind soundscape shot through with clean-toned if dark synth space psychedelia. Complete madness arrives with "Hohtavan Palatsin Juurella" in strange bewitching bell-like twanging guitar melodies torturing the vocalist as he fights through thick oppressive darkness and pounding percussion rhythms. The album closes with the desperately fast-paced "Seuraan Käärmettä Sulkavaa", perhaps the closest Vihameditaatio comes on this album to sounding like Circle of Ouroborus though the latter duo has certainly never done anything like "Seuraan Käärmettä Sulkavaa" in its ominously runaway nature, urgent and inspired melodies, rumbling guitar noise and spurts of synth hiss.

At once very experimental and original in its use of BM, noise and cosmic psychedelia elements yet also sticking to melodic song-based music, in tracing a personal inner descent into Hell, this album truly is remarkable and unique. The combination of BM, space psychedelia and a melodic song-based approach generates some very strange soundscapes reminiscent of 1960s-era psychedelic rock with garage and punk elements but set in an alternate universe of strange magic. At the same time that drums are pounding away, producing an oppressive suffocating effect, the guitars are sparkling away with fragile jewelled tunes against a dark otherworldly background of hissy effects and guitar feedback noise abrasion. The shouting can become a bit tiresome and monotonous but the quality and variety in the music compensates for the harsh vocals.

I have a feeling that in years to come this album will achieve cult status for its eccentric blend of melodic BM, noise and space psychedelia into a style of dark and desperate music of personal and existential torment.