A trip into the cosmos is not in the cards for me. I’m too old, I don’t think I’d do well with the training activities you have to endure to get ready, and I don’t have the knowledge base. But when accompanied by the effects of certain legal substances, my mind can wander beyond here and imagine places and planets no one ever will visit.
Blut Aus Nord’s music always seems to come from somewhere not of this plane or maybe even this universe, and their intergalactic ambitions never have been a secret. On their 16th record “Ethereal Horizons,” the band—vocalist/guitarist Vindsval, bassist GhÖst, drummer/keyboard player/electronics master W.D. Feld—continues to dip into the great unknown and create another adventure that can be absorbed mentally and psychologically. It’s an album that fits nicely alongside their last couple but also branches deeper into other elements, not all of them metallic in nature. They continue to add to the machine in productive, inventive ways, and each new release is another chance to push the mind to ultimate exploration.
“Shadows Breathe First” starts rather gently, serenely almost, and it takes a few moments before the storm situates itself, the familiar detached snarls echoing in the background of a star system. Clean singing wafts, reminding a bit of Robert Smith, while the power zaps through with illuminated edges, the playing growing progressive, growls gurgling before the energy swoops away. “Seclusion” is dark and cold at the outset, a spellbinding display pulling you to the center of the vortex. Howls crumble as synth sends sheets of ice, clean calls battling with desperate wails for control. The shrieks increase as the feel gets more atmospheric, elegant melodies pouring silver streams into oblivion. “The Ordeal” charges in, pastoral chants making your mind tingle, guitars churning, the vocals boiling in an open cauldron generating heat. The playing bubbles before hypnotizing, stretching the expanse across galaxies, eventually succumbing to a numbing, hazy stratosphere, everything consumed by gray.
“The Fall Opens the Sky” explodes with melodic gust, stomping through wiry guitars and elegant, angelic keys that dash constellations across the night canopy. The playing takes on a fantasy vibe, the guitars blasting new holes into reality, the whole animal gushing new blood, drums smashing as all the elements crash to the ground. “What Burns Now Listens” is infectious with ghostly clean singing, later replaced by crushing howls. The pace speeds up noticeably, guitars daring you to take them on, blistering through a weather front laced by jolting lightning strikes. “Twin Suns Reverie” is a brief instrumental with haunting keys and what feels like a deep dream state, calming and settling deeper into space. Closer “The End Becomes Grace” runs 12:23 and instantly stirs, shrieks attacking, the playing dissolving into weird, rubbery noises that lend a deeper alien feel. Guitars split the vision in two, charging as the singing swells, feeling frothy and gothy, landing with a weightiness that defies gravity, Then cosmic winds blow harder, leading to a hypnotic final few minutes that are enveloped in ice and drop into the void.
“Ethereal Horizons” is Blut Aus Nord at its most varied and adventurous, a record that has black metal as a base but soars so far beyond those realms that they cannot be trapped in any place. This feels like a BAN record the whole way through, but as they’ve grown accustomed to doing, they dress things in different shades and threads to keep you guessing. This is great music for deep concentration or simply going on a journey beyond this planet in your mind, from which this strange trio might actually hail.
For more on the band, go here: https://blutausnord.bandcamp.com/
To buy the album (North America), go here: https://debemurmorti.aisamerch.com/
Or here (Europe): https://www.debemur-morti.com/en/
For more on the label, go here: https://www.debemur-morti.com/en/
Meat Mead Metal 