Global Domination | Reviews | Horna: Ääniä yössä

Recent updates

Recent discussions

Reviews

Horna: Ääniä yössä

31/08/09 || Khlysty

(What the fuck’s going on with all those ümlauts? How the fuck is the title of the record properly pronounced? And, when one gets down to it, who the fuck cares? Anyway…)

“How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help”.
Giovanni Boccacio “The Decameron” (1353)

What with the pandemic of the swine flu and the slowly boiling panic it creates, I thought it would be a really nice addition to this summer’s horrors a record completely dedicated to another, much older pandemic, which during the Medieval Times decimated the population of Europe to almost its half and marked one of the most convoluted periods in human history. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about the infamous Black Plague, which swept Europe from 1347 to 1351, causing an estimated 75–200 million people and causing great societal and economic upheavals during its reign of terror and death (yeah, I know, I wax poetic, now fuck off my back…).

Well, this period of darkness gave inspiration to Horna, a long-standing and totally trad Finnish black metal, to dedicate this whole record to the Black Plague and its causing agent, the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Now, as I said a few moments before, Horna plays a com-fucking-pletely trad species of black metal, but “Ääniä Yössä” is a kind of an aberration to the band’s oeuvre. The record was made solely by guitarist/Horna mastermind Shatraug and vocalist Corvus and it was supposed to be released not under the band’s moniker, but as a side-project. Seems, though, that this plan was abandoned and the record became Horna’s fifth studio long player.

From the dark-hued cover, depicting a nude, obviously pissed-off lady, standing among ruins and a virtual sea of rats (who were the vectors of Y. pestis), Horna gets its message plain and clear: this is going to hurt. Bad. And it does, but not in the way one might expect from Horna’s past. Yes, Shatraug and Corvus use black metal’s almost entire basic arsenal (tremolo-picked riffs, blasting, shrieked vocals, lo-fi production, the works…), but the whole atmosphere permeating the record is one of introspection and bereavement, than of the usual quasi-satanist, hate-everyone clichés that burden the genre.

The four long pieces that compose the whole of “Ääniä Yössä” (ranging from almost 5 to almost 22 minutes) are based on repetitive riffs that create an ambience of unease and terror, but also, of desperation and resignation. Corvus’ vocals are especially strong, emitting a sense of fatalist horror and hopelessness rarely found in the more trad forms of the genre (although I must say that I don’t speak or verstein Finnish, so I really don’t know what he’s screeching about…), while Shatraug, who handles the instrumentation and arrangements, goes for the kind of composition that’s called “vamp”: long, repetitive songs that push the listener towards a trance-like state, dipping him into the record’s malignant atmosperics.

“Ääniä Yössä” is definitely not a masterpiece, neither is it a characteristic record for Horna. Of course, this doesn’t make it worthless; instead, its aberrant nature and dark ambience will give the listener much an (un)happy hour to ponder the horrors of the past and those of the future. If you want something to really darken your mood, “Ääniä Yössä” is a rather good choice.

Information
Released: 2006
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
Website: www.legion-horna.com
Band
Corvus: vocals
Shatraug: instruments

Tracklist
01. Raiskattu Saastaisessa Valossa
02. Noutajan Kutsu
03. Mustan Surman Rukous
04. Ääni Yössä

Reviews