Void - vox, bass
bTo - git
Thisworld Outof - dms
There is no crystalline sound, no polished, touching solos, no virtuosity - there is METAL. So much and just that, in its purest form, inspired by the early 90s and the cult of death. For many, the sense of aesthetics of its creators will be a degeneration and a provocation. Absit Ab Ordine Luminis is an expedition to dangerous areas of cemeteries where ritual mutilations go hand in hand with bodily pleasures ... It's a piece of rusting, blood-dripping metal for maniacs.
Recorded, mixed & mastered at Kanał Audio by Thisworld outof
Music by Upon The Altar and Lyrics by Void
Primitivism as a musical quality can be deceptively difficult to master. The conviction with which someone like Blasphemy approached it was lightning in a bottle; oft imitated, little understood. The compelling and intricately pre-meditated abrasion of ‘Transylvanian Hunger’ required a deeper understanding of where the true spirit of black metal was heading, one that few grasped at the time, and fewer still replicated with any success. The bizarre discography of Iljdarn makes primitivism profound through sheer tunnel vision and singularity of purpose; that, and a vast quantity of work all in the same vein makes Ildjarn style pimitivism worthy of academic study in itself.
Then there’s those that curate their primitivism. They know all the tricks, all the techniques, and publicly commit to this philosophy, resulting in music as performance art; impressive, but a facsimile, hollow at its core. I’m thinking of Teitanblood or Bone Awl as obvious examples of this. Which leads us on to Poland’s Upon the Altar. Their debut album ‘Absid ab Ordine Luminis’ displays many of the qualities found in this latter category of primitive metal, but there is something to this album that carries it above performative primitivism into something more interesting.
Whereas Teitanblood collect together fragments of riffs, order them in the most illogical way possible and cut them with random vocal ejaculations; one gets the sense that Upon the Altar really did intend this music to be recognisable as music. There are touches of USBM in Demoncy and early Havohej, some bombastic aggression in the manner of Slaughtbbath. But the guitar tone is so muddy, so ill defined, that even the slightest hint of subtlety to the riffs is completely buried. Even the rhythmic qualities to the guitars are lost to this singular, unbroken tone, one that shifts up and down pitches at varying intervals. Whether intentional or no, the effect is compelling enough.
The snare sound is weak and raw, offering a tentative rhythmic patter beneath the grind. This is in direct and jarring contrast to the bass drum, which is rich, but contains a trace of the clickiness found in overtly digital mastering. Vocals narrate their own path, a demonic law unto themselves, only loosely following the structural dictates of the music they are set to. Guitar leads offer nothing in the way of melodic articulation. They function more as mini noise experiments couched within these tone collections.
The reason ‘Absid ab Ordine Luminis’ stands out amongst other works reaching for an overt expression of the primitive is the simple fact that it looks like it was meant to be music in a way that Teitanblood never did. This album sounds like it began with Upon the Altar sitting down to write music together, constructing riffs and building ideas together. Then in the actual execution something went very wrong or very right depending on where you’re standing. They may have started out with the intention of making raw, intense, ritualistic black metal. But somewhere along the way – either in brewing the effects banks or in the mastering of the final recordings – the musical components dropped out of the picture entirely. When the music slows down, for instance on the track ‘Mortuus est Rex’, it feels like we’re witnessing a rusty car being taken for its final drive as pieces fall away, and the whole collapses into something no longer functional as a car, or even a piece of machinery. It becomes a representation of the very edge of sanity, the edge of an experience we can only hope to give names to. And this, ultimately, is what draws the ear to ‘Absid ab Ordine Luminis’ over other more curated attempts at the diffuse notion of the primitive.
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