Tracklisting:
 

Band: Black Boned Angel

Album: Bliss And Void Inseparable

Album Year: 2007

Label:  20 Buck Spin

Genre(s): Doom Ambient, Noise

Website: cpsip.co.nz, www.myspace.com/blackbonedangelnz

The matte black cardboard wallet with varnish lettering doesn’t give much away, it’s minimalist in the extreme and that reflects the contents of this CD by this New Zealand outfit, comprising Catville Birch Motel’s Campbell Kneale and others. The single 1 hour and 26 second track starts off as it means to go on, deep gong-like crashes tolling the death knell and calling the pall-bearers, announcing and introducing the funereal dirge that follows, eventually segueing into a faint radio static whisper and quickly ensued by the start of a piercing and insistent tone backed with crushing feedback, like the slow torturing of some innocent creature on some exquisite device of the Inquisition. Industrial strength guitar sludge comes next, coupled with a menacing vocal line deep in the mix which continues the barrage of sound and nightmare. This is all pretty unrelenting and misanthropic, this is the putrid heart of mankind, black as the void and yet capable of experiencing the most ecstatic of blisses, indeed combined in the one body they are inexorably inseparable; we are ALL capable of immense creativity AND exploding into destructive violence. The instruments and amps on here are taken to the edge of endurance and so is the listener, grief, anger, hatred, spite and the ecstasy of violence & bloodletting threatening to tip you over into bottomless chasms. If you listen on headphones like I do in order to gain the total experience, then the whole mass just grabs you, holds you down and besieges your brain, battering you into submission and forcing you to witness the atrocities being committed in front of your lidless eyes. Devastating stuff indeed and mightily apocalyptic. The odd tonal and repetitive quality of the piano line (which sounds as if the player is on his last legs and can just about remember this one motif) which comes in about a third of the way through, is itself an almost contradictory visitor to the proceedings, and only succeeds in unsettling further, instigating a shudder and frisson of unease that does nothing to reassure or instill confidence. It carries on in this unrelenting fashion right up to the end, the sense of a fractured psyche springing foremost to the mind, emblematic of mankind itself I feel.

To some, this would be just noise, but to others it says much about the human condition. Savage, black, unremitting yet dirge-like, it writes a report card for the human race, and it isn’t a good one – ‘must do better’ just doesn’t cut it. We are on the downward spiral and if the signs are being ignored then this is our justified end, that last headlong dive into irretrievable chaos and disorder with eyes wide open, and we will have only ourselves to blame. I am a great fan of bleakness, of bands of the ilk of Godflesh and Moss, that manage to convey through the sheer monstrosity of their sound the savagery and despair attendant on existence. And yet, the contradiction is that we as a species are capable of the highest art and most numinous of spiritualities, we can know the heights as well as the depths. The hopelessness and despair prevalent on this album would seem to suggest that even so the prognostication is anything but positive – the signs are there to be read, the solutions can be found should we exercise the will to do so but the question is: do we have the strength of character?

Yes, I admit that I have a slight streak of misanthropy running through my bones, so opuses of this nature satisfy me immensely and strongly echo my own sentiments, yet as some readers might have picked up I also like some of the most uplifting of ambient pieces too. I am quite capable of creativity (witness this review as an example) which can send me into paroxysms of delight but I also know that I can plunge into the blackest depths and feel a knot of barely contained anger surging upward from some deep well. I would wager that many of those reading this have experienced the same. THIS is why I hooked into this album so readily, that I am a reflection of the album and the album is a reflection of me, and why on repeated listenings I will discover more nuances and hidden depths that will only strengthen that conviction. To me this is soul-shaking epic stuff. It’s a mighty fine album, and worthy of any slow doomy music fan’s time and effort.

Rating: 8/10

-[S:M:J63]