Band: Wicked Messenger

Album: The River Disappeared Sideways

Album Year: 2007

Label:  Plague Recordings

Genre(s): Dark Drone Ambient

Website: www.myspace.com/wickedmessengermusic, www.plaguerecordings.com

Rating: 8.5/10

Track listing

1 THE CENTIPEDE (7:37)

2 TRANSITION (8:05)

3 CANDLES & KNIVES (9:40)

4 THE CENTIPEDE II (8:00)

5 DEALING WITH GHOSTS (9:41)

6 NATURE & REVELATION (12:10)

7 BURNING OF THE SEED (8:59)

8 LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR (5:38)

This is Wicked Messenger’s third release and I have been lucky enough to have reviewed the previous two efforts elsewhere (the self-released “The Three-Eyed Fox Lurking in the Serpent’s Throat” demo & “Phoenix (Pseudomonarchia Daemonium Vol XVIII) released on Belgium’s Bone Structure)”) and to have followed his evolution as an artist developing his style and approach to music. But unlike the previous two, I have to admit that I struggled somewhat to find the words to write, to relate what I was hearing with the track titles and then to verbalise my reactions. But no such luck here – so I just completely ignored the track names and just went with what I felt.

Martin Kränzel, the directing force behind this outfit, has definitely developed an instantly recognisable sound, a feat very difficult in an over-subscribed market. Once again we have the low bass rumblings and the swirling miasmas and cataclysmic crashings and inhuman demonic voices and it all adds up to a powerful sequential sonic narrative of how the universe came into being, the soundtrack of creation and I felt that I was there witnessing it, seeing it with my own eyes and feeling it on my skin. This is the exact moment of the start of time & existence, the placeless point at which everything had its ultimate origin, the gods, angels & demons and the galaxies, stars, black holes, asteroids, comets, planets and dust clouds.  First there was nothing, just a single point of potential. And then the powers started gathering, building strength upon strength, slowly transforming into an ecstasy and frenzy of activity. The power is tangible and palpable, primal, demonic even – it informs every second of this album and you feel it in every pore and in every fibre of your being. I could almost feel the blast of fiery heat as hot roiling dust clouds rolled and stretched lightyears into the aether and I could see untrammelled chaos running riot as atoms frenetically collided with atoms, as particles of radiation zipped through tenuous newly-formed matter, assembling and dissembling, sending other particles careening off on their own frenzied trajectories in an effort to fill every available corner of infinity. And just like those atoms and particles the sound on this album seems hellbent on filling every space in the entire universe not taken up by matter already.  The sounds swirl and coalesce, chasing and crashing against each other, colliding and breaking apart and reforming. By turns violently active and quiescent, on the surface you see the gargantuan but simple structures unfolding, but underneath is the real act of creativity, new elements being created at every turn and micro-structural changes effecting bigger transformations elsewhere. This is what the best dark ambient is eminently capable of being and doing, of appearing superficially simple in the larger view but peering deeper we inevitably see the subtle nuances and details that provide the framework for those deceptively simple structures. What WM has done is to effectively transcribe simultaneously those vastnesses and microscopic details into sound, conjuring up both vast galactic spaces and the dance of atoms.

One day I feel, a ‘major’ label is going to pick up on this act and do it justice. This is not to say that Plague haven’t done a good job of presenting and producing this CD – in fact quite the opposite, and they are to be particularly commended for using J of Kaniba’s rather stunning monochrome artwork for the cover (and paralleling the music in that it is superficially simple but look closer there are subtle details). They are also releasing WM’s next offering “Black Tourmaline” later on this year/beginning of next so if this is anything to go by we have much to look forward to, and that also goes for any new material beyond that release. Watch this space is my advice.