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Skullflower, "Strange Keys to Untune Gods' Firmament"
Since his recent reemergence, Matthew Bower has been more than happy to continue pushing his venerable project further and further into raw noise territory while bringing in a fair share of black metal influenced chaos to bolster the already maxed out volume levels. Here is roughly 100 minutes of pure feedback worship and dedication to distortion pedals. However, there’s none of the noise rock tendencies of Xaman or IIIrd Gatekeeper, for better or worse.
There’s no pretense or interludes here: disc one, track one, "Shivering Aurora" immediately cuts in with shirll guitar feedback and swells of noise, undulations building into rhythms via delays. There’s a slight hint of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music to be found, but in a more organic, natural sense rather than a "fuck you" to a record label one. "Gateway to Blasphemous Light" is similar: all midrange painful noise that doesn’t relent, but there is still obviously a guitar buried amongst the distortion and reverb. Over on disc two, "Star Konstellation" is a similar piece of pure guitar squall.
Bower and company aren’t afraid to inject some heavier sound treatments and electronic effects into the six string revelry: "City of Dis" sounds like someone vacuuming over a guitar solo while a broken synthesizer and emergency sirens wail away in the background. "Basement of an Impure Universe" is feedback, heavy undulating static and shrill electronic squeals far more than any traditional guitar sounds.
The remainder of the tracks combine both elements to some extent. "Starlit Mire" focuses on deep droning buzzes and massive, infinite expanding guitar squeal as opposed to the aggression that comprises the other tracks. "Enochian Tapestries" meld swelling waves of noise and distorted guitar notes that are left out to decay, the sound positively rotting. "Blackened Angelwings Scythe the Billowing Void" sounds like a tortured guitar solo blasting inside an empty parking garage, simple but effective.
"Nibelungen" and "Rheingold" both rely heavily on guitar noise and feedback, but on both tracks there’s a vibe that they’re going to launch headlong into the blasted stoner rock that characterized the older Skullflower, but neither ever does. For that reason alone it’s the noise equivalent of blueballs….the whole time I was hoping for some massive drums and detuned bass to crash in, but they never do.
In the sense of a spectacle, this disc definitely fits the bill. There’s something to be said for over an hour and a half of unabashed guitar squall, but "Nibelungen" and "Reingold" both leave me wishing for some of Bower’s rock stuff to show up amongst the feedback and noise. There’s no reason both can’t co-exist, so how about something more like Xaman here?
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