Awe/Vacantfield/End - Moerae (2015)

After decades of split recording exposures, I'd be lying if I said that the medium hadn't grown a little stagnant for me, largely because the lion's share of these things simply possess no semblance of studio consistency or creative coherence. In so many cases, it's just product pushing with buddies or complete strangers, in a limited format. But of course, when even a fraction of the imagination is applied to this process, you can come up with gold, with two or more artists functioning on the same page, producing a recording that has an intrinsic value beyond just a flag-waving collaboration for some label, scene, genre. As for the three Greek acts responsible for the Moerae LP, they have gone well beyond such a 'fraction', and put together something visionary and thematic which is far more than the mere sum of its parts...

Three tunes, each over 16 minutes in length, and each devoted to one of the Three Fates of Greek mythology (or moirai, or Moerae). You could say that it was in the blood, because what the bands have produced is not just some simple gimmicky idea which falters in its execution, but a lethal dose of progressive gonzo annihilation which takes great liberties from the standard black metal troops to incorporate anything from thrash riffing to pure ambiance (especially in "Atropos") to just about anything they fucking want to include. You're still getting plenty of air-time for the more technical black metal attack, which is the primary impetus of several of the bands, but the fact is they have not padded out such swollen tracks with loads of redundant nonsense. Each "Clotho", "Lachesis" and "Atropos" serve as smorgasbords of the unexpected, without devolving into sheer, matchless chaos. Production is competent all around, and while the mixes of the three tracks do vary incrementally, the common length of the playgrounds they inhabit and stylistic variation are so consistent that it does feel like the bands were at least communicating telepathically throughout the process.

I've reviewed all of the full-length records by End to date, but "Atropos" is by far the most interesting thing they've ever created and I do hope it marks a glimpse into what they might create in the future. Vacantfield has a notably more progressive/thrash component to its composition, but they never fail to entice me with all the jarring effects, decrepit vocals and subtle touches like the keys. As for Awe, well this is a band involving members of at least one other superb Hellas black metal band, which I am not presently at liberty to say, but tonally their contribution "Clotho" is the best at forcing the black metal motif with a lot of dissonance and some really evil breakdown riffs which are among the most fucking tremendous across the entire experience. Instruments on the whole are mixed to an infectious level of clarity which does not entirely eschew the rawness of the parent genre, but allows the listener to more easily ingest the psychotic musical spasms. Not all the riffs are gold, and there are some moments through each of the cuts which end up less engaging than their surroundings, but
all told, it's a really cool recording. Probably the most intriguing split since Dis Pater's Converge, Rivers of Hell from 2013, in which the Australian musician explore a similar mythic concept through three of his own projects. Track this down, whether you're a fan of the more eccentric Greek black metal wizards or just compelling extreme music in general. Fucking great.

Verdict: Win [8.5] (how fool a god can be)

https://www.facebook.com/endblackmetal
https://www.facebook.com/vacantfield
https://www.facebook.com/aweprovidentia

End - End III (2009)

Well it turned out that the first End wasn't the end, and that the second end also wasn't the End. Six years beyond that, the End arrives once more in its third manifestation of precocious, storming Hellenic black metal. Immediately, End III trumps its predecessors with vastly superior cover art. No more a gray, empty miasma will adorn the band's face, but a hooded mystery within a gorgeous, rich black and white woodland illustration. Points there for drawing in the listener's eyes, but unfortunately, End III does not musically hold up to its elder chapters. Not because the band have somehow devolved in ability, but because the dark atmosphere and mood characterizing the sophomore is much reduced here, supplanted with some study assembly line blasting that sounds like a hundred other acts in the field.

I'm not saying that the prior album was brilliant in its balance of dark ambient pieces, dour acoustics and more aggressive surges, but there was a particular charm to it that I enjoyed. On the End III, it takes even a few tracks just to encounter something interesting. "Catastrophe" has a half-decent, discordant breakdown in the bridge, but it's largely just a straight burst of blast with angry sounding sheens of higher string axe-work and growling. "Self-Eating Mass" moves straight into another blast-beat, though admittedly it lets up in its bridge for some sparser guitars. After this, the album starts to take on more variation. "Still in Flesh" and "In the Womb of Sick" feature, slower, dissonant guitars, not unlike a Glorior Belli or a simplified Deathspell Omega. In fact, there's a lot of this post-black appeal to the album, as it's also incorporated into "Lavish Gloom" and "Megalomania". To some extent, this is a more modern and experimental effort than the previous Ends, but it's not walking on untrodden ground.

For its production alone, End III is superior to what the band have previous released, as the guitars get a good even tone and the vocals sound more piercing or cavernous as the voices shift between growls and bloodied rasps. It's competent and technically more involved than that 2002-3 period, in particular the tighter drumming and the complexity of the guitars. But in the end, it's not all that harrowing of an experience, and despite End II's crudeness, it was at least appreciably haunting. End now seem to have the skill and penetration needed to rub horns with the faster, furious acts out of Norway, Poland and France, but it's hard to remember much of the 50 minutes of dissonant, devilish dissemination on the recent End of their evolution.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://www.myspace.com/endaequitas

End - End II (2003)

One of those bands that enjoys the infuriating tactic of the repeated 's/t' album, End would return for another monochromatic effort one year after their debut. While End was nothing special in of itself, I wouldn't deny that the band's bleak, melancholic and minimalistic approach to the genre was unwelcome, and their use of acoustics and other atmospherics lent a credible versatility to such to their gray expose. What I found most lacking were the riff patterns, an issue that End themselves seemed to have addressed with End II, at least marginally, for the guitars here seem to deliver a half dozen or more memorable sequences that rely on nothing other than their own carnal fortitude.

Once more, End are not performing in the 'Hellenic' tradition, per se, but emulating their Norse heroes like Burzum and Darkthrone with a decidedly grimy production that feels raw without ever becoming annoying. The songs are typically much longer here, most of which run from 8-9 minutes in length, and don't have nearly enough quality content to fill that space. However, the crude, drifting, suicidal epochs of "Funeral Pyre" and "Defalcation of Psychopathia" certainly manifest enough primitive furor that you'll feel the four walls of your sanity and dreams closing in upon you, so tight that they choke you as if a collar of spikes. There are also several similar abstractions and experiments in the strain of their debut, like the haunting depths of the guitar instrumental "Nebula" or "Winterfog" which proved the most absorbing things on the album...give End clean guitars, nature samples and synthesizers for ambiance, and their level of competence seems to escalate exponentially.

As if to cement the band's devotion to their Norwegian influences, they have also included a cover of Carpathian Forest's "Pierced Genetalia" here, from the excellent Black Shining Leather album. They don't take a lot of liberties, playing it straight, and there's not much impetus in choosing it over the original, but it somehow fits into their misanthropic original context, and I enjoyed the breakdown quite a lot in their Greek grasp. On the whole, End II is a superior effort in several departments. The ambient pieces are better, and immediately worth filing away for the perfect rainy autumn or winter days. The construction of metal riffs is more apt to catch the maniacal black metal addict's devotions. The vocals more venomous. It's not a reinvention or progression of the band's roots, but a wealthy enough portrait of sorrow and ire.

Verdict: Win [7.25/10] (to promise frozen enemies)

http://www.myspace.com/endaequitas

End - End (2002)

Sure, they might have chosen the most minimalist moniker possible, but I rather admire the Greek End's logo, with its 3 letter symmetry and containment of a mountainous landscape and moon. As for the music itself, it rises and swells between primal black metal landscape and periods of gray, ambient calm that certainly live up to the name. End is also another of those myriad endorsements throughout the 21st century that Hellenic black metal was rapidly losing its distinct luster, with many new artists adopting the newsprint aesthetics that were originated via Burzum and Darkthrone in the early 90s. No coincidence then that End is stylistically redolent of these Norse acts, but not so much that this debut feels entirely derivative.

For one, the ambient sequences really set it apart, like the yawning and subliminal whispers that haunt the intro "Sick", gradually folded into freakish, warped organs and rising, distorted tide. The bloated, nearly 11 minute epic "Nails and Forests" opens with a 4 minute sequence of gray, scoured wind samples and simple acoustic passages that inevitably pick up in intensity. Finale "Pessimism" is almost martial in its architecture, with brooding swells of synthesizer affixed to sparse acoustic guitars, and strangely enough my favorite piece on the album. When it comes to the metallic elements, though, the band have a much more straightforward aesthetic, ranging from tremolo picking and standard Norse blast-work to slower grooves reminiscent of Celtic Frost, Hellhammer and Darkthrone in their respective heydays. "Come Blackness Feed Me" and the surging stretches of "Nails and Forest" are the better examples of the former, while "Humanitarianism" sulks about the slower end of the spectrum. The vocals are rather painfully average, repressed snarls, but they at least suffice.

The production of the album is incredibly earthen, desolate and organic, which suits well the band's bleak natural aesthetics in both lyrics and cover imagery (the cover being not more than a smoky gray background with their logo front and center). Guitar tone is muddled and lo-fi, no more or less than what most one-man bedroom black artists produce through 4-tracks or their own home studio recordings. But where this might be a weakness for some artists, it serves End with an authentic vigor that almost overcomes its lack of strong riffing. Almost, but not enough. I counted perhaps 2-3 guitar passages on the entire album (excluding the acoustics) that caught any of my attention whatsoever, the rest feel rather phoned in and ineffective no matter how maudlin, glum and minimalistic these Greeks were trying to come across. I understand that the purpose here was to offer dirges of hypnotic simplicity, but I am of the mind that the more crude the composition, the more poignant and memorable the actual barebones riffs must be, and these are somewhat of a turnoff. Still, though, if you're seeking nihilism and emptiness alone in your black metal, you could probably do worse.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10] (the fictious reality disappears)

http://www.myspace.com/endaequitas