Shining - VII: Född Förlorare

Depressive suicidal black metal, now that's three malicious adjectives to our beloved genre of music. This sub sub sub genre of heavy metal's existence always intrigued me. Why would a band release music that glorify suicide and self-harm which if taken seriously has the potential to eliminate their own fan-base ? Why are the artists behind such spiteful music still living ? Those were just two rhetorical questions, we all know it is just an artistic expression no matter how hard they try.

My first introduction to depressive suicidal black metal was the Finnish band Totalselfhatred  with their debut self-titled release. The lyrics were despondent as advertised in the band name and the desolate atmosphere the album conjured won me over. In my quest for more hopeless music I stumbled upon the Swedish band Shining and to my joy and surprise they sounded like Opeth of My Arms, Your Hearse era.

 "...Take a long good look at yourself 

because maybe Shining isn't really your thing...."

That's what Niklas Kvarforth the founder, vocalist and the songwriter of the band said among other things in the 2 minute long speech that opens Shining's fourth album The Eerie Cold. Kvarforth goes the distance to send his misanthropic message across but he also goes the same distance to make the music progressive and Född Förlorare is Shining at its progressive best. 

The album also features guests contributions from Swedish metal luminaries like Erik Danielsson of Watain, Christopher Amott of Arch Enemy and Håkan Hemlin of Nordman.

Förtvivlan, min arvedel (Despair, My Inheritance) opens with a girl singing a verse of the song You Are My Sunshine and that's as happy the album gets. Förtvivlan has a background synth melody floating among the riffs like the song Dunkelheit by Burzum and then there is the acoustic breakdown in the middle. Shining knows the importance of dynamics, Kvarforth knows that when every thing is heavy nothing really is. He complements the heavy extreme side of the band with somber interludes and all the songs here has those moments. Acoustic guitar arpeggios, violins and mellotrons introduce Tiden Läker Inga Sår (Time Heals No Wounds) making the transition into harsh vocals and heavy guitar riffs even more stark. The song features Erik Danielsson providing his trademark rasps on the most black metal moment of the album.

Shining is known for featuring bombastic in your face guitar solos especially for a black metal band. Människa o'avskyvärda människa (Man, Oh Despicable Man) features two of those, one by their own Peter Huss and the other by Christopher Amott. The solos are introduced after some mellow string sections and guitar arpeggios with Kvarforth screaming their names when their solo begins. Amott unleashes a wicked solo, shredding his guitar into oblivion and for a moment Född Förlorare almost becomes Yngwie Malmsteen's Arpeggios from Hell. However my favorite solo is on Tillsammans är vi allt (Together We are Everything), it's perfectly phrased starting off with some beautifully executed melodic twin leads and then into absolute shred-fest, it complements the song perfectly almost being the extension of Kvarforth's anguish.

Tillsammans also has a Gothic rock feel helped by Håkan Hemlin singing the chorus whose lyrics in isolation tell a romantic tale.

"För utan mig är du ingenting, är du ingenting 

Och utan dig är jag ingenting 

              Men tillsammans är vi allt"             

(Because without me you're nothing, you're nothing 

And without you I'm nothing 

But together we are everything)

If you know Swedish or if you looked up for the translated lyrics like me, you'll know it's about man having substance issues which can be a metaphor for romantic love. The song ends the way it started, the piano melody bleeds into the opening notes of I Nattens Timma (In the Hour of Night).

I Nattens Timma is my favorite of the album, which is odd because the song is a cover devoid of any metal influence. The song is beautiful nonetheless, it's the kind of song that you long for when you are alone, it has a solemn comforting feel and of course a gorgeous solo in the middle.

Kvarforth gets all personal in the last song Fff  which is dedicated to his mother who died from a heart attack a year before recording the album. The words Fff stands for Från födseln förlorad, Swedish for "lost since birth". In the song he curses his parents for creating a life. Kvarforth proclaims his life as "ett misstag som aldrig borde få ha hänt (a mistake that should never have happened)". When the album ends with a warm chord of a mellotron, I am happy that it happened.   
          

Niklas Kvarforth

All of this hate and anguish wouldn't have worked if not for the vocals of Niklas Kvarforth. There is a reason why I included him on my 7 greatest harsh vocals of metal list. His ardour for what he believes (however flawed that may be) and the vehemence with which he screams may give some second thoughts to some feeble minds but his adherence to quality song-craft makes his music worth living for. Things cannot get anymore paradoxical than that, depressive suicidal black metal band Shining gives another reason for you to live.

Shining released their tenth album earlier this year  X – Varg Utan Flock, an album that mirrors their masterpiece V - Halmstad released 10 years ago. In the last song Mot Aokigahara Kvarforth says

"I was born December 1983 and I died December 2017" 

The album was recorded in December 2017. I know what you are thinking. As I said before, it is just an artistic expression.

   

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTMENT

Shining   Totalselfhatred   Opeth   Yngwie Malmsteen 

Arch Enemy   Burzum

X – Varg Utan Flock

Infernal Coil - Within a World Forgotten

Back in the year 1983 Slayer released their debut titled Show No Mercy and that record had a song called Evil Has No Boundaries. Only an iconic band can come up with such a great song title, a title that epitomize the brand Slayer perfectly. There are still people out there that associate the words "heavy metal" with the word "evil" and I don't think such notions are going to change, it's been almost 50 years since the first Black Sabbath record after all. Lets just yield to them, just for today, just for this review and shout "Heavy Metal Has No Boundaries" and that's an answer in 5 words why I love this genre of music more than anything. The ever-shifting ever-evolving boundaries of heavy metal just got a little wider with this release by Infernal Coil.

Their sound is definitely not from a "world forgotten", dissonance is the new djent and we have a plethora of Ulcerate-esque death metal bands and Deathspell Omega-esque black metal bands to ensure that the nightmare never dies when we wake up from the trance. If you have ever watched any of their live shows, "a world forgotten" to them is the primitive ways of yore. The dissonance in their sound is not used as a cutting edge musical device instead their sound is dissonant as a consequence of them embracing "music" before music as we know it existed. In one word the sound is primitive. 

This record conjures almost the same atmosphere as the last Desolate Shrine record Deliverance From The Godless Void.  If that 2017 release had some doom influence then this one has grindcore in its arsenal, if that one had a bit of modern day Behemoth in its feel then this one mirrors Portal in its execution. In either case both does the same to the listener, which is an unhinged attack of fury.

The fury here is omnipresent, the first three songs offers no respite. It's only in the fourth song 49 Suns where the band offers some silence, even that "silence" puts you in disquietude if you listen closely.  There is always some synths present in the mix which shows itself whenever the wall of sound show some cracks and ambient noises creep in and out at random. Dissonant guitar feedbacks pierce through the mix and so is some women's screams or maybe both are the same, both are unsettling. Continuum Cruciatus features church bells and some agonizing screams towards the end which bleeds to the next track Crusher of the Seed.         
   

Bodies Set to Ashen Death is the closest the band get to the familiar riff based approach to death metal. The song has an ominous crawling opening riff which also closes the song giving it a sense of structure or dare I say a trace of accessibility and then there is a breakdown in the middle, a well executed drop in tempo with spoken word samples and whispered vocals over a doomy 3 note clean guitar riff. In Silent Vengeance, the final song of the album takes its time to introduce itself, with the opening synths building up the tension. There is constant tempo changes, mood shifts even a distant female voices and from what I can infer detuned violins popping out. It all ends with sounds of wind blowing almost the same way Bathory used to end their albums in their viking metal era.

This album is grower, with each listen you discover more intricate details and that has a lot to do with the album's production. The production has a charming low-fi feel, never letting any instrument to stand out by surrounding them with a shroud of cobwebs. It invites the listener to invest more and every time they are rewarded. Make no mistake this is no early second wave black metal production, there is a well defined bottom end with the kick drum having a real punch especially in slower tempos.

I wish I could write something about the lyrics. I traveled to the nook and cranny of the world wide web and found nothing. If the song titles are anything to go by then it it is obvious that this is no fairy-tale and I suspect the lyrics to be as malignant as the music. In any case those vocals are hard to decipher even with a lyric sheet (like their band logo), that most probably was the idea, so no complaints from me.  

The big question is "Why should you listen to it ?". Listening to music such as these is not going to win you any chicks if that's your sole ambition in life. In a world that make judgments based on first impressions and that craves for instant satisfaction a band like Infernal Coil stands no chance.  People and art with depth and substance takes time to show its true colors. This record took time to reveal itself, I gave it the time it deserved, found its true colors and I paint those in 881 words for you. Now you know, let your choice be wise.

This is the most obscure band covered on this blog as of now. The blog is sailing on uncharted waters towards bleak horizons. As I've mentioned above Evil Has No Boundaries, me neither.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Infernal Coil   Slayer   Ulcerate   Desolate Shrine

Behemoth   Portal   Bathory

            Within a World Forgotten           

Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies

Alice in wonderland, is there really a thing called wonderland ? One of those childhood illusions that that they paint assuring your infant minds that everything is gonna be alright. In the novel the girl Alice falls into a rabbit hole that leads to a fantasy world, but in life we are woken up to a world of sorrows and sadness and in this world Alice is in chains. Alice in Chains was with me for a long time but the sheer genius behind the name dawned upon me today. We are blinded when everything happens the way we want them to be but when storms rattles the sails we suddenly begin think how deep the ocean could be. Today is a sad day and I don't want the sorrow to be wasted on tears, lets do something more productive, let me wax lyrical about one of the most mournful and bizarre pieces of music ever recorded.  

Alice in Chains is one of the 'big four' bands to emerge from the Seattle grunge scene the other three being Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. In the late 1980s rock music was dominated by glam metal in the mainstream and trash metal in the underground. Glam metal celebrated rockstars, sex and flashy aesthetics, it was the ultimate escapism, the evolutionary end of an alpha male and this was forced and consumed by the public, it was wonderland all over again. You cannot however hold back the darkest side to your souls, no matter how hard you fake your smile through it, no matter how many times you listen to Pour your Sugar on Me. Grunge represented that angst in us, the contempt for this world and its illusions and when Nirvana's Nevermind sold 30 million copies it only reaffirmed that I was not and will never be alone. 

Alice in Chains was the heaviest of the four, the most heavy metal influenced and the most psychedelic. The band was back in studio after their successful Dirt album, it was sad days for the band for they were thrown out of their home for failing to pay the rents. They took their acoustic guitars to the studio just to see what might happen. What happened was something beautiful and melancholic.

Jar of Flies is predominantly an acoustic album, the band's most expansive work even though it was not meant to be. Gone are the Tony Iommi riffing and the rumbling bass and in came Led Zeppelin guitar arpeggios, Pink Floydyan aural landscapes, violins and harmonica. What remains however is the dual vocal harmonies of  Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell and that pretty much defined the core Alice in Chains sound. The band experiments with various sounds from the wah pedal drenched Rotten Apple to the violins and strings of I Stay Away, the ominous guitar strains of Whale & Wasp to the harmonica of Don't Follow and each of these songs are backed by some gorgeous guitar strummings. However it's the song Nutshell that inspired this article, that opening riff is probably the saddest set of notes played on the guitar and the lyrics that open the song are equally desolate.

"We chase misprinted lies 

We face the path of time 

And yet I fight 

And yet I fight 

This battle all alone 

No one to cry to 

No place to call home"

It is one of those songs that you long for in times like these and the song has probably the best solo Jerry Cantrell has ever written. There is a glimmer of hope as we hear the opening chords of the next song I Stay Away and that shimmer of happiness comes to a halt in the pre-chorus. No Excuses is the happiest of the lot, a song written by Cantrell about Staley.

"Yeah, it's fine 

We'll walk down the line 

Leave our rain, 

a cold trade for warm sunshine 

You my friend 

I will defend 

and if we change, well I

love you anyway"

Jar of Flies was a commercial success as well. It became the first EP to top the billboard charts and for a long time it was the only EP to do so. All of these was ironic in the sense the music was not meant to be released. Alice in Chains went on to release one more record in the year 1995 and in the year 2002 their front-man and one of the most iconic voices of rock Layne Staley passed away. The band reformed and bounced back with a new singer and released Black Gives Way to Blue in the year 2009. Their latest release Rainier Fog came last August and it is at least to me an album of the year contender.

Layne Staley (1967-2002)

There are two ways of contemplating this post, the most inspired writing ever done in this blog or the most uninspired one. The former because I am channeling my most visceral feeling for an album that has traces of those and the later because haven't heard more than two songs of this album prior to writing this piece. In either case it doesn't matter for no one is going to read this other than the one to whom I will send "Guess What?" as soon as I finish writing. Obscurity has its own advantages and I am (mis)using it to the fullest.

It's been finally out of me, Maiden Priest has become a shoulder to cry on, which is more than I thought this blog will become. When it is out of the system you levitate and I float in despondent air.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT

Alice in Chains   Grunge   Nirvana   Pearl Jam   Soundgarden

Glam Metal   Layne Staley

         Rainier Fog