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Blut Aus Nord: What once was… Liber I

14/04/11 || Khlysty

Oh, man, is this a candy treat for sore ears! Yep, boys ‘n’ gals, Vindsval and co. are back with a 31-minutes-long, one-song-separated-in-two-sides 12”-45rpm limited edition mindfuck of a record and this time around all the moorings are cut from the first moment, so that the listener might easily understand that, while BaN may delve and toil into bizarre atmospherics and sick ambiances, the black metal bite and venom was never gone from their music; it just boiled underneath, waiting for the right moment to blow off the lid and spill uncontrollably to every side.

Supposedly “What Once Was” is the first outing of a series of, let’s say, more “to the side” works of BaN, that will work complementary to their more “high-brow” productions. Don’t really know what Vindsval means by that; all I can tell you is that “What Once Was” is as worthy an addition to an impressive body of work as one could expect from such a left-brained, experimental beast as BaN. The multi-part composition – please, remember, this is one song – seems to be a culmination of sorts of all the things that the band experimented with in former works: there’s a lot of extremely dissonant and hyper-aggressive black metal (with blastbeats, tremolo picking, rasped vocals… y’know, the works); there are many sick-ambient parts, there are quite a few pieces of the slithery, vertigo-inducing guitar work that characterized “MoRT”; there are also hints of the more melodic approach towards madness that pervaded “Memoria Vetusta II”.

What’s really amazing here is how the band manages to combine all the disparate elements of its sound into one insidiously perfect and flowing whole. Each part of the “suite” recombines what has made BaN a force to be reckoned with in the past to make something that, while obviously harkening to the band’s previous works, sounds so demonically new and scary. If there’s one thing that stamps “What Once Was”, that’s the amazing guitar work of Vindsval: his riffing here is of the highest order possible and it propels the song forward into voids of extreme dissonance, only to emerge – a few moments later – into pools of sick serenity, just to be transformed again into aggressive black metal whirlwinds. To make things simpler, this probably is Vindsval’s most impressive achievement to date and that says a lot, concerning a guy who’s turned the guitar into something extremely alien and harrowing during past recordings.

The production of “What Once Was” is phenomenal, as it manages to combine the chilling almost-mechanical atmosphere of “MoRT” with the more organic ambiance of, say, “Memoria Vetusta II” or “Odinist”. The vocals are more upfront this time and, even though it’s still impossible to make out what Vindsval is screeching about, have a more prominent role in the structuring of the song. Effects are used sparingly but effectively and the drum sound seems more human-made than on previous recordings. Bottom line is, of course, that BaN continues to amaze. The quality of this record is extremely high, the songwriting is of the highest order possible and the whole is so much bigger and greater than its component parts that it threatens to swallow the universe into a black hole of reverbed dissonance. This is incredibly good and it would be a sin not to give it the attention it rightfully deserves.

8,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Website: www.blutausnord.com
Band
Vindsval: vocals, guitar
GhÖst: bass
W.D. Feld: drums, electronics, programming

Tracklist
01. Liber I (side a)
02. Liber I (side b)

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