Propelled by the sticks and skins of the might Palisade; a mesmerising, malevolent creation of hypnotically raw darkness is formed; summoned, wielded and cast by the great Peregrinus; fell warden of the northern skies and wraith of the ice lands.
“…Here I seek for aeons of sequestered mourning. For in the end, there is only this. The clawing grip. Cold & Dark, As Life.”
The auditory experience is enhanced with the haunting artwork of Woodcvtter illustration
As the chime of misery's bell toll, i, lost and wandering.
A mesmerizing silence.Bewildered,the cacophonous nocturnal voyage drags on. Into the realms of frost. Blood freezing,pale, i am eternal sleep.Here,amongst the ashes of the perished smug,Draping white forrest floors. Here i seek for aeons of sequestered mourning. For in the end, there is only this. The clawing grip. Cold & Dark, As Life.
As its title "Cold & Dark, As Life" proclaims, the debut album from Norwegian duo Kvad is a deathly cold and stark recording of raw atmospheric lo-fi blackness. Though Kvad is a recent project, its members Palisade (drums) and Peregrinus (everything else) together and apart are notching up respectable pedigrees in BM: both musicians are also members of Darkest Bethlehem and multi-instrumentalist / vocalist Peregrinus also has two active BM projects in Praefuro and Solus Grief whose debut album I reviewed not so long ago here. Palisade and Peregrinus's choice of music also isn't very recent, harking back as it does to the classic 1990s-era Norwegian BM of bands like Emperor.
From the very start, room temperatures plummet, ice forms on the exteriors of windows and you are plunged into freezing Arctic conditions with opener "The Chime of Misery's Bells": just the singing alone, swathed in glacial reverb and distortion grit, is enough to freeze an entire herd of mammoths in a solid block of ice. Sharp-edged tremolo guitar chime, searing in tone, dominate the music while the drumming provides able support at sometimes insanely fast blast-beat speeds. The title track continues with the style of freezing raw melodic BM, casting the vocals even deeper into icy abysses made manifest in an increasingly defined soundscape.
Song titles like "I Am Eternal Sleep", "Aeons of Sequestered Mourning", "Into the Realms of Frost" and "A Mesmerising Bewilderment of a Nocturnal Voyage" among others suggest a soundscape in transition between, and overlapping considerably with, the worlds of sleep and subconsciousness, and of the deepest realms of ice and snow where the sun never rises and winter is permanent. The vocals on these songs grow ever more demonic and frigid, and when you think they can go no lower or deeper into ice hell, on each succeeding track they plunge even more deeply into the dark crevasses of the music.
In spite of their forbidding and dismal sonic details, the songs are well written and performed, and some tracks occasionally boast good, even lively headbanging melodies beneath the ice-covered reverb and distortion of the ranting voices. There may not be a lot different between some individual tracks – "I Am Eternal Sleep" and "Amongst the Ashes of the Smug" almost seem like two parts of the same song – but the important aspect of the album is that it describes a hellish deep-winter soundscape of ice, extreme cold and (in later tracks) equally extreme madness. The best songs on the album come late in the album: "Into the Realms of Frost" has some very stirring melodramatic riffs which have a strong epic quality beneath the frosty atmosphere and screaming ghost voices, and "A Mesmerising Bewilderment of a Nocturnal Voyage" has a pounding beat, agonised screaming vocals and instrumental moments of high emotion, unforgettable slow riffs, and tragic drama.
Every moment on this album exudes frosty atmosphere, despair and raw lo-fi blackness, and the album rolls briskly and single-mindedly to a devastating conclusion. Listeners are left in a deep dark hell and must try to claw their way out. That'll probably take a long time, as the universe where Kvad dwell is stunningly portrayed in all its bleak desolation.
Sample:
KVAD - Cold and Dark, As Life (full album, 2022)
