Double Feature: Gateway to Selfdestruction and Saor

By Hera Vidal. 2016 has been an excellent year for black metal releases, and, despite its shortcomings, the genre continues to show that it has more tricks (and releases!) to bring to the table. Thus, for the purposes of this double feature

By Hera Vidal.

2016 has been an excellent year for black metal releases, and, despite its shortcomings, the genre continues to show that it has more tricks (and releases!) to bring to the table. Thus, for the purposes of this double feature, we are looking at two bands that deserve our undivided attention (if they don’t have it already): Saor and Gateway to Selfdestruction.

Artwork by Martin Mordoc

Gateway to Selfdestruction is a new and upcoming German atmospheric/depressive black metal band that formed back in 2013. Despite of them being relative newcomers to the scene, they have played in a lot of successful live gigs, including one at In Flammens Open Air back in 2015. Their debut from Northern Silence Productions, Death, My Salvation, is one that people should take note of, because it sounds familiar, yet it has something completely new to it.

Their debut album Death, My Salvation, which was recorded, mixed and mastered in July 2016 by one of Germany’s leading Black Metal producers, Patrick W. Engel (Temple of Disharmony), shows influences ranging from old Katatonia (primarily the Brave Murder Day-era) to more contemporary acts such as Shining, Woods of Desolation, Ghost Brigade or Antimatter. The lyrics describe the moment when one decides whether to live or to die as well as the history behind such a decision and its aftermath.

From Northern Silence Productions.

While I completely agree that atmospheric black metal can be considered a saturated subgenre due to the many bands that have come out in the past decade, there have been a few diamonds in the rough that I have come to appreciate over the years. Death, My Salvation has caught my attention for two reasons: the cohesiveness of music and the emotional range it has at the backbone of the music. This album is the crossbreed between Shining’s emotional, vocal range and Katatonia’s dreary atmosphere. This album shows an incredible emotional spectrum while playing music that seems to enhance that emotional range with harrowing vocals, fast drumming, and soft melodies that are layered underneath the atmosphere the music has constructed. Gateway to Selfdestruction may still be a young band, but they clearly know what works for them. Their capacity of taking their influences and merging them with their own personality astounds me, as they have made the sound their own.

One key note to discuss is the impressive musicianship that seems to accompany the album. The music never wanes or loses its character as the album progresses, only amplifying the vocals that seem to accompany you in those existential moments. After the sixth track, “Soziopath”, and the music’s energy begins to wane towards the beginning of the last two tracks. Considering the level the album carried itself, having to stop the musical assault means that the band decided to close the album on a softer note, which is rather nice. The scream at the end of “Mirrors of Despair” is an interesting choice to end the album on, which begs the question of whether it was intentional. Whatever its intentionality, it definitely surprises the listener, as it remains as unexpected as it should.

As far as debut albums go, Pain, My Salvation is great and definitely worth checking out. It’s emotional, has various influences in its atmospheric black metal DNA, and will eventually grow on you once you give it your undivided attention. This album is a good beginning for cementing the band’s career, and I expect great things to come from this fledgling band.

Cover painted by Sebastian Wagner

If 2016 has taught me anything, it’s that you should expect the unexpected, especially when creators have strong work ethics. While I had expected—and looked forward to!—various releases out this year, I didn’t expect Andy Marshall to announce a new album this year. I was slightly concerned about the album Marshall had released this year under the name Fuath, and all I could think about was whether the sounds of both projects would overlap, bleeding onto Guardians. I also thought about the release dates of both albums; would there be enough time in between releases for people to know the difference? I am happy to say that Fuath and Saor are two completely different entities that each show a side of Marshall’s personality.

When it comes to composition of both music and lyrics, do you need to have a particular mindset or do you need to be at a particular place to compose?

I don’t need to be in any particular place but I like to take my acoustic guitar with me when I’m visiting my family’s cottage in the Isle of Skye. It’s really remote and the landscape from the garden is stunning. I also get a lot of inspiration from hill walking or when I’ve been out exploring in the wild. Sometimes it just takes a film, book, or soundtrack to trigger my creative side. I usually start out with a guitar riff or melody then start adding other instruments. As for mindset, I definitelyhave a place in my head I go to when I’m writing Saor material. It’s total escapism.

From No Clean Singing.

This album has everything one comes to expect from Saor: beautiful melodies, emotional, fluid passages of music, cohesiveness in its structure, and superb songwriting. It is also highly atmospheric and sorrowful, as if commemorating the life and struggle of Scotland. This album picks up right where its predecessor, Aura, left off, and it shows the deep love Marshall has for his home. After all, when you adapt native poetry and melodies into your music, your pride and love for your mother country tends to show.

One of the things I can appreciate about Saor’s superb songwriting and composition is how they always seem to have a theme that the listener can easily follow. Whether it shows up throughout the album or it fills into some of its tracks, you can always be sure that the theme will be there. In this case, the theme was weaved throughout the entire album, and showed up prominently in “Guardians” and “Autumn Rain”. That construction makes the album come alive, especially with additional instrumentation from the likes of Bryan Hamilton (Cnoc An Tursa) on drums, Meri Tadic (Ex-Elueviete, Irij) on fiddle, John Becker (Austaras) on strings and Kevin Murphy on bagpipes. Despite the somewhat repetitive nature of the music, it isn’t dull, and the addition of those instruments and their tonalities help the album from becoming boring. The layering of the music, the instrumentation, and the vocals provide the album with a sorrowful, melancholic tone. Unlike Aura, where there seemed to be elements of pride and happiness, the sorrow that engulfs Guardians takes a life of its own, adding a deep level of melancholy and respect to fallen lives and the struggles Scotland has faced throughout its history.

Guardians is definitely worth your attention, and it continues to show that Marshall’s brand of Celtic-influenced atmospheric folk/black metal has not slowed down in the slightest. This album remains a beautiful piece of work and I am sure it will be a contender in many end-of-the-year top 10 lists.

Crystall Balls / Kief Demon - Roots

By Karen A. Mann. Florida’s Crystal Balls create sweeping, stoner doom that uses elements of shoegaze and the occasional blackened bit to create a sense of decay and extreme anguish. Their songs tend to unfurl slowly, meandering in unforeseen ways, but carefully balanced between raw and refined

By Karen A. Mann


Florida’s Crystal Balls create sweeping, stoner doom that uses elements of shoegaze and the occasional blackened bit to create a sense of decay and extreme anguish. Their songs tend to unfurl slowly, meandering in unforeseen ways, but carefully balanced between raw and refined.

Roots is a split with fellow Floridians Kief Demon, and includes two songs by each band. “Baby Prison,” the first Crystal Balls song, begins melodically, with atmospheric looped guitars that are soon pierced by a guttural screech. Sludgy grooves, and vocals that toggle between shrieking and growling, take the song in a harsher direction. The band returns to a cleaner, shimmering melody at the end.

Their second song, “Altered Strain,” is more raw, with a lumbering, repetitive sludgy groove, and a blackened breakdown. Like “Baby Prison,” the song closes in a cleaner, more traditionally stoner manner.

Kief Demon’s contributions are rawer and looser, but still show promise. They tend to ride the line between sludge and Southern rock. All proceeds from their side go to HoneyLove, an urban beekeeping organization focused on saving bees and spreading bee knowledge.

“Paradox Void” begins with a raw low sludgy riff, punctured by the sound of bong hits and coughing along with inhumanly growls vocals. The second song “Crow Eater,” is their standout track, with a droning, hypnotic riff and more traditional vocals.

Roots is the first release by either band. At the least, it’s the only music either band has on Bandcamp. I’m hoping that both bands -- especially Crystal Balls -- issue a full release soon.

Anagnorisis - Peripeteia

By Justin C. It took me a little longer than I would have liked to write about Anagnorisis's new album, Peripeteia. It's not because the album is flawed in any way--far from it--but because it's such a powerful personal statement by singer Zachary Kerr. There are layers and layers to peel back

By Justin C.


It took me a little longer than I would have liked to write about Anagnorisis's new album, Peripeteia. It's not because the album is flawed in any way--far from it--but because it's such a powerful personal statement by singer Zachary Kerr. There are layers and layers to peel back, even more so because the Bandcamp download contains a booklet that Kerr included to explain how the album came to be.

I tend to shy away from track-by-track reviews, since they're really no longer necessary when you can listen to an album in full yourself. I like to highlight and guide, but I don't feel as though I need to hold anybody's hand through an entire album. I'm going to make an exception for this album, though. It's my way “in,” if that makes any sense, and it's the best way in I can think of.

The album opens with a chime-like figure, which is joined by additional guitar and spoken word vocals. This builds to a proper black metal blast, finally wrapping up with the first of many cassette recording samples. "Transparent -" is an apt title for this song, as Kerr is seeking to be transparent not only to himself, but to the listeners. The sampled cassette recordings are from Kerr's childhood, and they were presented to him by his mother after his father died in 2010. The samples often seem innocuous enough--Kerr's father, for the most part, seems calm and unmenacing, if not a bit persnickety with the details as the then 4.5-year-old Kerr answers his questions. But if you're like me, your hackles will be instantly raised. It's rare these days to be presented with audio recordings that aren't going to be damning in some way or another.

"Disgust and Remorse, Pts. I and II" are as dark as you might imagine. Kerr's black metal shrieks are raspy but full, and the instrumental work is layered and sweeping. With lyrics like "My wound is self disgust" and "Depression now leads me by the leash," you get a pretty clear sense of the mood of the work. But even so, the end of "Pt. I" starts to lift just a bit. You can hear Kerr trying to move past something, as he tells us that "This reflective version of atoms is not my story." These turns in the music are what allow us, the listeners, to survive the intensity of this music. This is black metal first and foremost, but throughout the album, we're offered a variety of turns and surprises. Of course, relief doesn't come quite that easily. "Pt. II" sees Kerr pushing the harshness of his vocals just a little bit harder, telling us, "I’ve never been enough / I've never done enough."

It's worth noting at this point that in Kerr's booklet, he describes reacting to the innocence and honesty of his childhood self when hearing those cassettes after so many years. It's also worth noting what they are in contrast to. Kerr doesn't give us all the details, as he himself says it would "turn this thing into what I wanted to avoid," although he doesn't offer more specifics than that. We learn that his father had difficulty with alcohol and gradually grew distant from Kerr as he grew up. We learn that his grandmother was extremely abusive to his mother. In other words, his parents came to their new family with their own wounds, and clearly some of these were visited on Kerr. Maybe most importantly, we learn that teenaged Kerr was sent to a boarding school in West Somoa, what basically amounted to a prison camp that billed itself as a paradise in which troubled children could heal, but in reality was scamming parents for money and providing nothing but abuse and deprivation on their children.

The next track, "5306 Morningside," is suggestively titled after Kerr's childhood address. The track starts with a moment of levity, with Kerr's father introducing a song Kerr is to sing, which dissolves into a fit of giggles. It's a gentle introduction to one of the fastest and most punishing songs on the album. But with the giggling and change in styles still fresh in our minds, we're left to wonder if it's Kerr's father who is being addressed by the final line of the song, "You always provoked the best in me / by showing me the worst of you."

"Night Skies Over Nothingness" enters with a clean guitar line that's been covered with a heavy dose of fuzz. It definitely gives you the feeling of being in the wilderness, although Kerr's stint in boarding school might be coloring my impression. We get another cassette sample, this time of young Kerr reading "Invitation," a poem by Shel Silverstein that invites its readers to share their stories, regardless of what misdeeds they may have done. Although it's a poem for children, it's appropriate for an adult working through their demons in such a naked way. At times, the music in this song lends itself more to driving hard rock-type riffs that the usual black metal tremolos, but again, this is the kind of variety that keeps this album from being an unrelenting monolith of aggression and sorrow, one that would be difficult to sit through.

"Peripeteia" is both the title track and a literary term that usually refers to a turning point, and so this song seems to be in the sequence of the album. We're treated to a lovely rendition of Kerr's mother singing Connie Francis's "Cruising Down the River," a song that she explains to Kerr was important to her mother. It's hard to know what to make of this, knowing what we do about the bad relationship between Kerr's mother and grandmother, but as the song progresses, something does turn. We're treated with melancholy synths backing the black metal, and even an electric organ makes an appearance, harking back to an older rock sound.

"Metamorphosis" has an almost upbeat feel. It makes no sense for me to psychoanalyze Kerr, on what his relationship with his parents or his own struggles ultimately mean, but this song, and the record as a whole, puts me in mind of what a lot of us come up against at a certain age. You feel damaged, both by design and by your own mistakes or self-destructive tendencies, and you're angry at your parents for real or perceived failures. But ultimately you're a grown up, and you have to come to some kind of peace with yourself, and peace with the fact that your parents came to parenthood with their own damage. You have to learn to move forward, even if it hurts, and even if some things are never said or never resolved. The clear tribute to Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" in the middle of this track is an interesting choice. The band plays the hell out of it, and it works, but of course "numb" isn't always "healed."

At the end of the album, we come back to the idea of transparency. We're treated to half-singing/half-chanting vocals, and beneath, the words, "Dad, I just wanted you to know..." Kerr sings of "metamorphosis or death, the only freedoms I see," and we're led out of the album with the same, slow chiming that the album began with. Perhaps not a resolution, but part of a cycle.

I've given you only a taste of what Anagnorisis has put out here. So much of metal is escapism, so if this rawness is too much, you may be better off sticking with the usual death metal monsters. But for those who are brave enough to delve in, the rewards are great.