Coven of the wolves --- When Bitter Spring Sleeps --- 2013 (Pagan Flame)
Hmm. The joke may very well be on me. When I sampled this before buying it I was intrigued by its laidback, lush, pastoral feel and thought it might all be like that --- kind of Antimatter or Lake of Tears --- but when I checked for this review I see they are listed as (gulp!) Black Metal and that their front (and only) man has been in other bands called, er, Satan’s Almighty Penis and Destroy Humanity Now. Um. Doesn’t sound too pastoral to me. Has Mister Cock-up checked in for a single room with bath, I wonder? Hold onto your hats, people: we’re goin’ in!
Interestingly, after their demo released in 2008 When Bitter Spring Sleeps (we’re obviously going to be calling them WBSS from now on) shared an album with Panopticon, which those of you who are following the “Recommended by…” thread will know really impressed me with its mix of country and death metal. Also interesting is that as Panopticon is apparently one guy, WBSS is also a one-man show. So will this album be anything like "Kentucky" I wonder? I really don’t know what to expect, so let’s just push play and see how we get on.
Ambient sounds greet us and are joined by a nice acoustic guitar as “Like a flame in the fields” opens the album, some really nice keyboard sounding like pipes or flute coming in too, making a nice sort of medieval atmosphere. I hear feedback electric guitar getting ready to snarl though and percussion ramping up, and now yes it gets harder and more aggressive, the electric guitar punching in and the drums slowly pounding away. With a sound like a wounded animal, one-man-band Lord Sardonyx brings in the vocal, and you know, it’s not at all bad. I can understand it: sort of viking or pagan metal is what it puts me in mind of. The song is a slow grinder with a lot of power, and let’s remember this is one man doing all of this.
It’s said about WBSS that they (or he; which should I use, as this is one guy? Let's go with they, as a band or project) really espouse the old pagan ways in their music and retain a reverence and respect for nature and the Earth, so it’s kind of eco-metal maybe? At least, though the tag is shown as Black Metal, they don’t seem to be singing about Satan. Yet. It’s powerful stuff though, and His Lordship is clearly upset with Man as he snarls
”We've honoured your gods/ Far too long/ And now we sing /The Earth's own song.” Fair enough really. The electric guitar and indeed the percussion drops out entirely in the sixth minute of the almost nine this runs for, leaving the pipes and acoustic guitar, then just the guitar to carry the tune with the pipes coming back in right at the end as it fades out.
There are only seven songs on this album, but apart from two short instrumentals nothing is less than eight minutes, and the longest runs for over eleven. The next one is just short of ten, with Lord Sardonyx again railing against the misuse of Earth’s resources in “Rest in the ground” as he asks
”Why do you condemn /The ground you walk upon? /Why poison the soil /That brings you life?/ There is magic in these trees /And lost wisdom /No longer able to see /Through your sleeping eyes.” Sentiments you can’t really argue with. This too starts off gentle but soon kicks up into a harder, faster metal tune with lots of buzzy electric guitar. Sardonyx actually seems to have a really good voice, almost like an operatic tenor, but he uses it in a different way, nearly drawling the lyrics as he sings, and it’s very effective.
It’s also quite incredible how quickly a ten-minute song goes by, and before I realise it we’re at the end, with a quote from Edvard Munch that surely encapsulates the Lord’s beliefs here:
"From my rotting body/ Flowers shall grow /And I am in them /And that is eternity". A short instrumental, complete with birdsong effects and some nice acoustic guitar takes us into the title track, which starts off with the sort of walking tread we heard in Moonsorrow’s “Varjoina kuljemme kuoilleiden maassa” back during Metal Month, then a sort of gypsy camp revellery punctuated by the cries of wolves and the shriek of crows, before hard guitar smashes in and takes the melody in a heavy, powerful direction, Lord Sardonyx’s vocal almost chanting as he sings about the lord of the wolves:
”He is father to the mighty wolves /Raising only grey sons/ Hidden deep in forgotten lands /In caverns there he feeds revenge.” Good uptempo percussion joins the guitar and it’s quite the headbanger with some Maiden/Lizzy style fretwork in it. As we move into the third minute the tempo picks up and the song changes from marching through the forest to trundling along on metal rails, possibly in a sled of some sort pulled by wolves, who howl in the background. Again, powerful stuff. There might be an element of Ragnarok, the Norse legend of the Twilight of the Gods here, as His Lordship declares
”Hammer of hearts and steaming breath /They thunder into nighttime fields /To conquer this world of man /A ravenous sea of blood and fangs.” Ragnarok is also called The Time of the Wolf. Hmm. Could be just coincidence?
The song slows down for a bit of ambient instrumental amid the baying of the wolves in the seventh minute, then it's just their calls that take it to its end. Sort of a little pointless really: almost a full minute taken up by nothing but wolf howls and cries and barks. The second instrumental is up next, basically just native-style drums, very slow and hollow, with some recordings of speech playing under it. It lasts for just over a minute and then the epic begins. Clocking in at just under twelve minutes, “The sky has not always been this way” opens with the by-now-familiar birdsong then a nice folky acoustic guitar, suddenly blasted aside by snarling electric as the drums slide in almost unobtrusively beneath it. It’s over two minutes before the vocal comes in, the guitar remaining tough and growly, something like a violin joining it as Sardonyx wails
”The old ones they say /That the sky has not always been this way.”
Really nice instrumental break from about the sixth minute to the seventh then the vocal comes back in, and again it’s another song that though it is the longest on the album seems to be over all too soon, taking us to the closer, the just short of nine minutes “Homestead hailstorm”, which opens with the sounds of rain and muted, distant thunder, the sound of what could be an iron gate swinging in the wind and banging against its gatepost. In fact, the whole song, all eight minutes and fifty-two seconds of it, is just that: the sound of a gentle rainstorm, which, I guess, given the title we might have expected. Still, no music at all? I guess Lord Sardonyx really takes his nature worship seriously!
TRACKLISTING
1. Like a flame in the fields
2. Rest in the ground
3. Crossing paths
4. Coven of the wolves
5. Tomorrow tribe
6. The sky has not always been this way
7. Homestead hailstorm
First off, I must repeat this is all the work of one man, and it’s pretty damn impressive. Though it wasn’t quite the laidback acoustic music I had been expecting from the samples I heard it didn’t veer too wildly away from that, and though the guitar work at times (most times) was pretty heavy, at other times it was quiet and introspective, and the percussion never made itself too obvious or took things over. The vocals were certainly decent and while I wouldn’t list His Lordship as one of my favourite singers he is definitely suited to a genre of metal, maybe doom or pagan but I don’t think black. I don’t feel this album really flagged for an instant, and even though I sort of felt a little cheated with the closer, it was clever, well done and totally in keeping with the objects, aims and beliefs of the man known both as Lord Sardonyx and When Bitter Spring Sleeps. He certainly remains true to his faith, right to the end.
Most of you will probably not even regard this as metal --- I’m not sure I do --- but if you need an album that makes you think about what we’ve done, and are doing, to our home, without all that new age wishy-washy nonsense, then this could be a stepping stone you should try. If nothing else, it proves that you can love the planet and still be hard as nails: I doubt anyone would dare label Lord Sardonyx as a tree-hugger, though he might not mind.
A very surprising and indeed very satisfying album, and I look forward to more releases from this multi-talented artiste.