SEIDEN chants Raw and Brutal Black Metal inspired by the ravages of war, occult indigenous folklore and decadence of Okinawa.
"Furuki Aku no Hahen" is compilating 3 years of Demo "Kurai Ryukyu Minzoku Densho", Single "Akatuski no Michishirube" and EP "Kohai no Densho" releases.
Founded in 2020, Seiden bills itself as Okinawa's only black metal band, and as such has dedicated its career to crafting a distinct style of black metal based on the culture, music and history of the Ryukyu Islands. Led by guitarist Denhiro Ishimine, who has a jazz background, Seiden plays a noisy and chaotic brand of raw blast-beat BM aggression that perhaps draws on free jazz and improv for inspiration and influence. Twisting and shifting this way and that, often very sharply, the music gives an impression of relentless, random storm fury out of which frantic riffs rise and then fall back. Vocalist ASB shrieks and growls like a being possessed by the darkest of dark forces. Most of all, the band plays in a dimension of utter shadowy blackness, of the sort familiar to fans of heavy Japanese psychedelic rock acts like Fushitsusha and Keiji Haino: the clean production, the music's forays into sheer hellish noise feedback and the huge changes in volume from loud to whisper-quiet certainly encourage this impression.
In late 2023, Seiden released a compilation "古き悪の破片" (in English, "Shrouds of Old Evil") of work that had come out on a demo in 2022 and an EP in 2023, so this is the best release to start with if you're unfamiliar with the band's music. The compilation plays like an occult ritual, starting with a short piece performed with Ryukyuan folk instruments accompanied by ASB's bloodcurdling chants in the background, and from that inauspicious welcome the music launches into a blackened folk / death rollercoaster spiral into a murky journey that among other things takes listeners to the village of Yomitan in Okinawa where, in April 1945, 140 local men, women and children were forced to commit mass suicide by the occupying Japanese army, before the capture of Okinawa island by US forces. Though the compilation features eight tracks, the music across several of them does not change a great deal in style, pace, oppressive mood and the range of instruments and vocals used so at 36+ minutes the whole recording can be heard as if it were one work in itself with several chapters. Synth drums are turned up to insane and inhuman levels of hard-hitting speeds, often dominating earlier tracks; multi-tracked vocals roar and fight among one another; and guitars burn or howl with sharp metallic intensity. Tracks often begin and end very quietly, almost imperceptibly, as though emerging from and then later disappearing into a shadowy pit, and this ploy enhances the sense of the music ebbing back and forth, between the shadow otherworld of death and our own material plane of existence.
Heard in its entirety in one go, the compilation is consistent throughout with no filler, though earlier tracks have more energy and aggression, and later tracks (tracks 6 to 8) feature a more musical (if still noisy and chaotic) approach with actual riffs appearing and the guitars and synth percussion being equally balanced. These later tracks are truly gems, combining BM with the noisy experimentation and free improv approach of heavy psych rock, and the music on the last track reaches monstrously oppressive levels with never-ending riff repetition, pounding drums and continuous shrieking, snarling vocals. The punishment fades into the distance and listeners can imagine that it's still going on and on and on, long after the physical or digital release format has ended.
You'll probably be glad that this compilation is short as the path it travels is a terrifying exploration of human violence and savagery, and the chaos and madness spawned by that brutality and which in turn spawns even more violence. Ambient folk elements serve to emphasise and intensify the otherworldly nature of that journey into the hidden shadow recesses of the human psyche. As the recording progresses, the chaos and noise become more structured and a bit more restrained, but the bloodthirsty savagery remains. While the music is very good (if not necessarily to most MA fans' taste), the most unforgettable aspect of this work is the sinister shadow atmosphere behind the music, itself a murky entity within which unspeakable violence is barely contained.
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