Obscuring Veil – Fleshvoid To Naught

March 2019 – I, Voidhanger Records

Mories, famous for having recorded half of the avant-garde/experimental black metal released since 1996, participates in his second release this year, Fleshvoid To Naught. Released by the folks who distributed Tchornobog and the Spectral Lore/Jute Gyte split, the album has a legacy to honour – while less abrasive than other similar acts, Obscuring Veil is more than the sum of its multinational parts.

After a quick intro, Fleshvoid To Naught picks up and delivers some of the most dissonant black metal in recent memory. The drumming has the kind of micro-intensity you'd usually find in jazz, with fast but subtle cymbal sections and an overall tactful approach, mostly leaving blasts behind for a more technical and original style. There's something approachable and conventional about it, maybe the mix of relatively simple time signatures and recurring power chord strumming, which make for a comforting and safe carriage while you ride an insane roller-coaster. The ride is called Schizophrenia, and the longer you stay on, the farther the exit gets. Inevitably, Obscuring Veil bring out the arpeggios, which begs a side question – is avant-garde black metal really avant-garde once it becomes predictable and develops tropes? It's almost as if the genre has become a misnomer for the stranger side of dissonant black metal. Either way, their arpeggios do sound like a couple of detuned music boxes playing different songs simultaneously.

Despite what the album credits suggest, I can hear three distinct vocal styles, and while the mental-patient wails and black-mass inspired quasi-whisper that shows its ugly face from time to time, it sounds like they've hired a woman to sing in what I can only describe as a Mesopotamian funeral chant. The Mories influence gets clearer by the third song, as Do You Want To See The Knife I Used? makes a smooth transition into horror film soundtrack – and not the average slasher flick, they've gone full snuff film. I'm positive they actually managed to record anxiety, and the Mesopotamian woman is still wailing.

Fleshvoid To Naught is psychedelic music, but on the opposite end of the spectrum – eminently negative, challenging and off-putting. Finally, the closer arrives, starting with an abused cymbal and a further abused voice, and ending with Mories-tinted noise and that same haunting, reverberating voice – a fitting end to a distressing and difficult album.

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