Band: Grimbergen

Album: A Lonely Place

Album Year: 2006

Label:  Steinklang Industries

Genre(s): Symphonic drone doom ambient

Website: www.myspace.com/grimbergen

Rating: 8.5/10

Tracklist:
 

Grimbergen is Scotsman Nathan Clemence (a self-proclaimed miserabilist) who has ensconced himself within the Czech Republic and upon listening to this album that country’s aura seems to have seeped into his very bones, albeit unconsciously – what you get is an incredibly visceral slab of isolationist electronics that is quite numbing in its exploration of loneliness and pain. Nathan himself explains that this was the state of mind he descended into after the break-up of a long-term relationship and the concomitant feelings that episode triggered formed the basis and inspiration for these six slices (+ two bonus tracks) of grim drone and dark ambient soundscapes. Couple that with the upheaval of hauling himself from the northern realm of the UK to central Europe to insert himself into the life of a strange city in a strange country and what results is the perfect recipe to produce the bitter confection this album constitutes.

The first six tracks on this album have an overall coherency that gradually pulls the listener in to the wretched emotions set forth here (the track titles give it away with such epithets as “Without Hope”, “Unable to Escape” & “Of Frustration and Disappointment”) and the ingredients used to effect this consist of deep sweeping bass drones, chanting vocals, percussive and rhythmic passages, all produced with cold electronic precision but with the added spice of bass guitar, both plucked and Ebowed, resulting in accents of organic warmth. All tracks are played at a funereal pace, which lend a hint of sorrow for things lost and never to be regained and also an introspection dwelling on what might have been. And the pace also explicates a need to bury deeply the ability to feel these destructive emotions and to shut oneself off from them. The wordless vocal passages, a single voice, deep, melancholy and monk-like, echoing in vast empty cathedral spaces, further enhance the cloak of utter despair and isolation that envelops the lonely man, pushed out of his proper orbit – this is especially effective on the first track, appropriately titled “A Lonely Man”. You can literally feel the wish to withdraw from human contact, to forsake the world that brings only pain and sorrow, and to live a life devoid of human emotions and the experience of them.

I got pulled in from the very first percussive note of the opening track, feeling the sheer weight of the claustrophobia envelop me and getting heavier as each track progressed, the dread continuing into “Without Hope” and “Waiting for Better Days”, spiraling ever downwards through “Unable to Escape” & “A Constant Feeling” and finally concluding with “Of Frustration and Disappointment”– the music is unwilling to let go, wants to smother any joy that you may be feeling and demand that you share and empathise with the deep blackness the rejected is feeling. There is no light here, not even a sliver, in fact the sheer gravity of this black hole of despair has sucked it all in to itself, hating the light for what it represents AND for what it shows up.

The bonus tracks, “We are the Dead” & “Drainage (Sieben Remix)” have a different air about them, being less droney and more symphonic, more cinematic even but still with a catacomb atmosphere, and even reminded me of Goblin, especially the first one. “Dead” features more electronics and repetitive figures, building up the atmosphere slowly over its 10:25 length, the shuffling zombies amassing to forever snuff out the last remnants of life and warmth. And the Sieben remix is straight-up gloriously stompy martial industrial, a positive antidote to all the negativity on the rest of the album.

This is a wonderfully coherent and ‘together’album, that both tells a story and is an exorcism of some demons that overshadowed the creator, and even though the emotions portrayed are entirely negative, I for one am glad that they led to the creation of this fine album