Spirit Death

Triple Silence is one of the record labels operated by cult exploitation film outfit Salvation Films (their other label is Hydra), and this fifth Triple Silence release is the second album of black metal band Miasma. Miasma is the solo project of one Cinifer Valiros a.k.a. Transgressor, a self-proclaimed ‘Satanic Genocide Terrorist’ (tee hee!).


Spirit Death is appropriately being released on Walpurgisnacht 2007 (that’s April 30, ignoramus), and it’s the follow-up to last year’s debut Of The Blood. Nine tracks extend over 62 minutes, and satanic and misanthropic themes predominate. ‘Communion From Beyond’ is an interestingly different opener – six and a half minutes of sibilant whispers and hisses over atmospheric background ambience, periodically building to a tormented crescendo of growls, but never leaping into life with guitars or drums. More black ambient than black metal, this reminded me of Xasthur and Jotunspor. ’Death Finally Comes’ brings guitar in for the first time, used extremely minimally – a simple repeating three-note phrase, with delicate harp-like plucked guitar audible in the background, over spectral whispering and an ambient wash of what sounds like crackling flames. This minimal, slow riffing sounds something like the slower parts of Burzum, tracks like ‘Gebrechlichkeit’, for instance. ’Channelling Hateful Energy’ offers extremely lo-fi, necro black metal – fast, tinny drums buried deep in the mix, inaudible bass, high, trebly guitars, and truly painful fingernails-on-blackboard vocals which are probably the most distinctive element to this musical hellbroth. It all sounds a bit like early Behemoth, Darkthrone or some of the Blazebirth Hall bands like Forest or Branikald – pretty good in a very basic way, in other words. ’Opfer To The Dark Gods’ maintains the fast’n’dirty feel, with pounding cymbals and double bass drum work, vocals which roar almost inaudibly from a great distance, and simple, strident riffing. ’Eternal Eclipse’, at over ten minute the lengthiest track on here, is very different. There are almost three rather boring minutes of Vinterriket-style ambient synth intro before the guitar and drums are crossfaded in. The brutally primitive sound of this track is dominated by the drums, which are higher in the mix than on earlier tracks. However, all this noisy fun fades out around the eight-minute mark, leaving another two minutes of extremely quiet ambience to round off the track – I couldn’t really see the point of this, I must admit. ’Prophet Of Murder’ has a doomy, almost Slayer-like riff, and great tortured, unearthly vocals – it seems to me that Miasma do a better job than most at capturing that classic Burzumic vocal sound, and this, along with ’Opfer To The Dark Gods’, is my favourite track on the album. ’Merciless Void’ is quite short, and never really seems to get going. The title track, ’Spirit Death’, returns to the necro sound of ’Channelling Hateful Energy’, with passages where the music stops, leaving only the blood-curdling vocals.


So far, the album has offered some pretty good, if extremely basic, black metal with several nods towards black ambient. The nine-minute closing track ’Final Journey Into Torment’ is Spirit Death’s real ace in the hole, though. This track isn’t black metal at all – it’s full-on noise music of the kind produced by Merzbow or KK Null. Immense, scalding waves of coruscating, eardrum-shredding static pour forth like a black libation to the gods of chaos – this could conceivably be guitar-generated, but it’s impossible to tell. The only other act I’ve known do stuff like this in a black metal context is the recent Goatvargr collaboration between Nordvargr and Goat, released by Cold Spring Records last year. More purist BM listeners will learn to stop the album after track eight, but for those who appreciate the occasional envigorating blast of noise (myself included), this last track propels Spirit Death into the ranks of truly memorable black metal albums. Black metal is an overworked genre in which it’s becoming harder and harder to make music which sounds truly distinctive, but Miasma have managed to create one of the most innovative BM albums of the past couple of years.