Black Veil Of The Sanguinarian

Black Veil Of The Sanguinarian – 2008 – Crucial Bliss – CDr – Limited to 300

 Disc art

Inner Sleeve 

Outer Sleeve [Layout & Design by Adam Wright / Crucial Blast]

Tracks:

1. Returning to Rust

2. Inside the Inner Voice

3. Bleeding Black

4. NOD

Total Length: 45:55

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012
Charles Hoffman
The Centipede Farm

I lucked into Marax’s 2008 release on Crucial Blast, Black Veil of the Sanguinarian. It’s a more subdued, slow-burn kind of death-drone, which is welcome after the assault of the above split. At “Returning to Rust” it’s evening in the countryside of singing metallic insects. “Inside the Inner Voice” uses very slowed-down spoken word, which someone somewhere mentioned in reference to last year’s Funeral Liturgy as a bit of a Marax trademark, but this is the first other place I’ve heard it. “Bleeding Black” has a great rumbling-crumbling sub-bass drone with what might be progressively higher-pitched and more-distorted versions of itself layered over. Seven minutes in I think I hear a distant voice in it but then it’s gone. Later it seems to resolve into a couple of chords, but only for a second before the piece ends. We find those chords again a little ways into “NOD”, a 22-minute sound trip that transitions nicely from a noise drone intro to a mesmerizing horror movie synth line that forms the basis for the rest of the track.




SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 2009
Heathen Harvest
Rexington Steel

Often times as I sit in front of my crappy PC and wonder just how to begin writing about some of the more mundane submissions I am obligated to contribute to our highly respectable underground organization, I long for those few and far between times when I am too awestruck to write (instead of being too pissed off to write because of how little talent some people have)… Fortunately, this is one of those times. “Black Veil of The Sanguinarian” is one of the most profound Power Electronics releases out there. Period. It may only be an EP, but the four tracks delicately guarded by the simple, thin bi-fold cardboard, dvd-sized cover can easily be set side by side among artists like Navicon Torture Technologies, Schloss Tegal or Stahlwerk 9. This is not only because there are sonic similarities in the style with which the tracks are delivered, but because they take on a life of their own, and have a quality that can easily help define the genre that contains it. And, surprisingly, vise versa.

“Returning To Rust” is a fine introduction indeed, opening up gradually, but by no means slowly, getting straight to the point with a well-defined, deep rumble, unstable but orderly static, and a seemingly random screech here and there. Not a trace of what anyone would call music is to be found in this track, which can easily become anyone’s favorite of all four. The following, “Inside The Inner Voice” is comprised mainly of what composer Eric Crowe has posted up on his myspace profile as “invocation”, a deeply down-tuned vocal passage paired only with the faintest atmospheres that only become absolutely apparent at the close. To add further insight, it feels like what his album art looks like, particularly the close-up of bones in a catacomb printed on both sides of the simple packaging. Track number three is a marriage of the calm and depth of track two with the desperation and dirt from the first. It goes under “Bleeding Black”, and it would actually be as intense as “Returning To Rust” were it not for its elements being put out at such low volume frequencies. But this is not a problem, and is a method often utilized by Leech of NTT. Here we have a fierce, but subdued distortion, a searing, indecipherable, almost unrecognizable length of screamed vocal, and a low drone that is mostly felt more than it can be heard. Yet it doesn’t just fade out, it practically tears itself to shreds for only a few seconds in the most chaotic way, like a banshee ripping itself out of some trans-dimensional auditory vacuum.

The last song is actually as close to a song as the material on this offering gets, and in a very dignified and elegant manor. It is almost longer than the three that proceed it combined, clocking in at almost twenty two and a half minutes, and is described as “a headphone epic”. FUCK THAT. Something as beautiful as “Nod” deserves to let its waves reverberate over everyone and everything within its immediate vicinity. Here, a synth line dominates most of the track, sorrowful, but also having some Martial undertones when let along with the strong, but well placed noises that hold it together.

To end this review, I would like to acknowledge a statement made by Mister Crowe included in the liner notes of his fine release. He thanks “those who listen deeper and hear more”, but because of the exceptional work put into the actual mixing of the sounds, everything can be heard easily. I have to say, the man certainly knows how to EQ. But the contents of “Black Veil…” are more than mere sounds, and I believe it is the inaudible manifestations that surface as you experience this work that Eric refers to.

--------------------------------------------------

TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2009

Foxy Digitalis

Kevin Richards

I am not quite sure what I expected when I saw this one. The cover art and title had me thinking I was in for some serious buzzing blackness, but much to my surprise that isn’t quite what this one had in store. It was a darkness of a very different kind.

The initial low hum of forest sounds and insectile chirping eventually gave way to a white buzz that seemed to be made of deliciously frying transistors and cricket’s legs. This is followed by some seriously detuned murmurings as we hear the keeper of this dark cauldron muttering to itself about some evil perpetrations. This sinister dynamic continues through two more pieces which also keep their dynamics at a pretty static level, like that horror movie heard faintly in the neighboring unit. These pieces build and develop, but not necessarily through their use of crushing volume, but more through their use of seemingly static forms whose repetition itself creates the subtle changes. It is like the shadow you see from the corner of your eye, you know something foreboding is about but the mystery is never fully revealed. 7/10

-------------------------------------------

Crucial Blast

Adam Wright

The first new release from Marax since 2005...this is electronic/harsh noise by Eric Crowe, who in the past served as throat for the cult Southern grindcore band Social Infestation, who also featured future members of Mastodon and Withered. This full length has been in the works for several years and is only now crawling out into the light, but the wait has sure been worth it. This'll incite some serious zoneouts from anyone who dipped their skulls in the molten deathdrone of Marax's ultra-limited Love Of Death series...Black Veil has four lengthy tracks of heavy liquid nightmare distilled from the catacombs. The disc opens with the fuzzy muted swirl and distant percussive clang of "Returning To Rust", which moves through soft gauzy layers of crackling distortion until exploding in a churning wall of concrete-mixer crunch with heavily modulated, howling demonic vocals. "Inside The Inner Voice" is a seven minute exercise in pitch black ambience and malignant incantations, and "Bleeding Black" stretches out across a vast abyss of distant reverberations and ambient fuzz, filled with far-off sonic flutterings, metallic scraping and screaming voices that just barely heard, an intensely creepy ambient dronescape. And the final track "Nod" is a twenty-two minute headphone epic...this is one of my favorite Marax tracks, a threatening ambient film score piece that stretches way out and moves from huge slabs of growling black ambient drift and buzzing black metal guitar through epic celestial synthesizer riffs. Simple synth melodies are repeated over swathes of droning amp rumble, the low-end sometimes swelling up in huge waves that threaten to overwhelm the entire piece, and a beautiful little melody begins to take shape later in the track that sounds like it's being played on a heavily processed piano, repeating over and over. Later, the buzzing, fuzz-drenched sheets of blackened guitar and droning distortion come back in and the sound becomes a massive muted fuzzdrone that reaches out forever, finally fading off into the ether as the track comes to a close. I'd normally never describe any of Marax's material as beautiful since most of his works either suggest feelings of isolation and dread or simply shear your fuckin' dome off with extreme electronic skree violence, but with "Nod" Marax gives us one of the most mesmeric pieces of music I've ever heard from him, a sprawling, subtly beautiful narco-scape that's like hearing the mystical krautrock orchestrations of Florian Fricke and Popol Vuh faded and filtered through the deformed, dank dungeon atmosphere of Abruptum. 

Black Veil Of The Sanguinarian is packaged in the signature Bliss sleeve with full color artwork from Crucial Blast, and the disc is attached to the interior of the sleeve on a plastic hub. Issued in a limited edition of 300 copies.