Since 1994,
Vindsval has been the mind and multi-instrumentalist behind France's
Blut Aus Nord, immersing the project's music in both conceptualization and compartmentalization. While
BAN have always embraced black metal's confrontational aesthetics, their music ranges far and wide across the underground metal spectrum, incorporating industrial rhythms, dark ambient vistas, and even, as displayed so ably on 2019's
Hallucinogen, a warped, futurist strain of mutant, sometimes melodic, psychedelia. Shot through the
BAN catalog are multi-volume concept offerings whose twisted philosophical threads are held together with an always varying musical template.
Describing their current sound as "bleakly maximalist harmonic unease,"
Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses offers seven tracks inspired by 20th century sci-fi/horror author H.P. Lovecraft's fiction. The music is presented as a score or soundtrack. "Chants of the Deep Ones" offers downtuned guitars playing micro- and whole-tone riffs atop a throbbing, nearly breathing bassline and constantly rolling, crashing, upmixed drums and screamed vocals. While there is no apparent melody, the circular sonic cacophony is mantra-like á la
Odinist, yet more impactfully deliberate as nearly subliminal voices emerge in a multiphonic chorale adding dimension. "Tales of an Old Dreamer" is frenetic, atmospheric black metal with shard-like lead lines, cavernous reverb, and opaque ambience. "Into the Woods" commences formlessly with static whirring and bird sounds before a punishing, nearly glacial guitar progression evokes the post-industrial soundscapes of 2003's
The Work Which Transforms God. "Neptune's Eye" is more aggressive and unhinged. Almost unidentifiable harrowing growls are mostly submerged under a hyperstrummed chordal vamp and blastbeats as layered synths draw out haunted harmonies and horrific growls from the sonic ether. First single "That Cannot Be Dreamed" offers a dissonant, heavily reverbed guitar riff that moves back and forth along four notes pushed into the red by constant, blasting drum rolls. It's framed by a deeply unsettling ambient aura (one can hear trace production influences from the
777 trilogy) and distant screaming. Layers of feedback piece single-string guitar lines resulting in what amounts to an episodic, six-minute crescendo. "Keziah Mason" erupts with piercing guitar wails before the emergence of a plodding, grinding, riff progression governed by a menacing bassline, thudding, syncopated drumming, and a Baroque-style vocal chorus in wordless chant. Moment by moment, it sounds like it is pouring from a wind tunnel. Closer "The Apotheosis of the Unnamable" sums up the preceding music. Shrouded in a maelstrom of pure atmosphere, it binds black metal, neo-psych, industrial drumming, and multiple vocal layers that seemingly blend the angelic into the demonic, all governed by spacey, ambient textures.
Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses offers angular dissonance and fluid structures that initially challenge listeners; there is little to hold onto, even when the music does glance in the band's rearview. That said, the production, though widely varied, is all of a piece. All told,
BAN's album offers considerable musical intricacy combined with a dramatic sonic architecture that governs the flow, bridging massive force with inharmonious beauty in reaching for emptiness in the darkness of the cosmos. ~ Thom Jurek