Music hardly scares me now. After a zillion albums of “scary” noises from natural and artificial instruments, I’ve heard the tricks of Western “extreme” music. Knowledge removes fear. The average metal album with goats and pentagrams? In 1989, that might have been scary. Now it’s bait for a target demographic.
But V (Relapse, 2010) is different. Yes, it has goats and pentagrams. Yes, it’s nominally familiar. It’s unmistakably an Unearthly Trance record. Ryan Lipynsky’s voice, his riffs, the feel of his band – with Unearthly Trance records, you need not ask, “Who is this?” But on V, you now must ask, Sabbath-like, “What is this, that stands before me?”
Much heavy music is art of catharsis. People build up negative energy, and they release it through music. There’s nothing wrong with that. Entire subgenres form around “Arrrrrrgh!” But usually that’s all there is – expulsion of energy. Few bands have the power to accrete, not dissipate. Khanate, Tom G. Warrior’s last two records, Brutal Truth live – they expel not just energy, but a presence.
I work out in my room, and it gets hot. If I go to the bathroom and come back, my expended energy, trapped within those walls, is still palpable. It’s feverish, oppressive, maybe toxic. This record is as if I found that my energy had collected into a being, looking back at me.
. . .
What does this beast look like? Well, it’s bigger than me. And it probably has features of me. That’s what fear is – a projection of some aspect of oneself. (Maybe that’s why, aside from low creativity or budget, movie monsters and aliens are often anthropomorphic.) Other than that, I can’t really tell. It’s more of a presence than a vision.
But I do know that this beast is kicking my ass. It’s around me. It’s very real. So many metal albums now have the requisite ambient intro (in hell, all bands will listen to their ambient intros for eternity), then go into their version of banging pots and pans. It’s so constructed and predictable. One can just hit stop and get on with the real world. But V feels real. It’s like a nightmare from which one can’t awake. At first, it may not even feel like a nightmare.
By today’s standards, it’s not overtly aggressive. Many records are louder, faster, more downtuned, more “more”. But this one pulls you in. It works slowly. The riffs contract and expand. The melodies make sense. (“Solar Eye” is really just a heavy blues.) And Ryan Lipynsky isn’t yelling at you. Maybe he’s muttering or howling at something in the distance, but he’s no boogeyman with a mic.
Then, before you know it, you’re halfway into this horror of an hour, and you realize that all that contraction and expansion was really breathing. It’s all around you. You’re in the belly of the beast. It’s grinding you up, slowly. Sometimes teeth and acid speed things up. Otherwise you’re in pitch black darkness, turning into pulp.
. . .
V booklet detail, Great Seal of the United States
. . .
The record itself describes a similar situation. It’s drenched in occultic imagery – goats, pentagrams, hexagrams, the sun, the moon, numbers. Glyn Smyth’s artwork and Lipynsky’s lyrics offer clues about this sigil soup. A recurring motif is the solar eye in the pyramid. The booklet features what looks like a perversion of the Great Seal of the United States – an eagle with a body like an infinity symbol atop a winged lion’s head, clutching a snake and a trident. Arrows bristle from around it, and two groups of five stars hover nearby. The pyramid/solar eye and the Great Seal of the United States are symbols on the US one dollar bill, with Masonic associations.
Lipynsky’s lyrics also have a political tinge. They recall Neuroses’ with their elemental references – fire, ice, sun, electricity. But certain lines reveal a head not in the clouds, but concerned with the terrestrial: “So few control so many”; “There are kings who will drink your last drop of blood / And there are slaves that pathetically worship fools”; “Souls devoured by the oligarchs”. Perhaps Lipynsky is referring to what some call “The New World Order”. (However, he seems to subvert the traditional notion of the solar eye as a mechanism of Masonic surveillance by recasting it as the individual eye of knowledge, the means of self-defense through vigilance.)
I’m not sure; I’m not well-versed in the occult, and much if not most of these references escape me. But I bet Lipynsky’s talking about end times, and I bet he thinks they won’t be pretty. He, his bandmates, and Smyth have conjured up an amazing audiovisual representation of this. I may not understand it all, but it feels menacing and very real. Music has hardly scared me like this.
. . .
HEAR V
. . .
“The Horsemen Arrive in the Night”
. . .
“Current”
. . .
SEE V
. . .
BUY V
Amazon (MP3)
Amazon (CD)
Amazon (LP)
The End (CD, 2LP)
Relapse (CD, 2LP, shirt)
. . .
thanks for the great reading.
“in hell, all bands will listen to their ambient intros for eternity”
this is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.
Otherwise, nice write up for an excellent record. One of the best of this year from one of the best bands period.
the hell are you talking bout?
only recently discovered this band, thanks in part to a random Decibel featurette but mostly from repeated mentions in the comments of this page… great fucking album. only listened through twice, but this thing feels classic.
The additional vocals by Darren Verni on “V” seem to be overlooked in every article. His decrepit howls are sick!
This review sounds like it was written by my dad. This album is a return to form for unearthly trance. Its the best thing theyve done since ‘in the red’!
my favorite album this year. it’s a beast.
Cosmo… you have a son?
Can’t get enough of V or the ‘Trance.
Best album of the year!Incredible record, incredible band.
Gave this a listen the other day because of all the mentions I’ve seen on this blog, and it blew me away! Usually I have to let doom/sludge albums grow and breathe (much like you said in the review) but this was just out-the-gates THERE!
Gonna be giving this many more spins in the months to come!
This isn’t a return to form; it’s the strongest music they’ve created, period.
@Chrome Peeler Records – I normally wouldn’t link to my own stuff like this, but since you mentioned Verni’s vocals being absent in reviews – they are not absent in mine: http://spinaltapdance.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/unearthly-trance-v-2010/
Apologies to everyone else.
@Cosmo – I think your line on ‘contraction and expansion’ is exactly right for this album, which lumbers along in a thoroughly unexpected, almost tangentially aggressive way. Great write-up.
This album rules and hasn’t been getting enough respect/attention (in my opinion). Maybe there aren’t enough generic black metal vocals for the “heavy metal media”?
and I put heavy metal media in quotes because if I were speaking out loud, that part would be in a phil anselmo voice
Riff Wrath – Everything is better in a Phil Anselmo voice.
ALIEN MOON!! Travel by its lesser light..
I have a few early Unearthly Trance 7″ left from a distro I ran; Interested? Get in touch!
I liked this album when I first listened, but the more I listen to it, the more it grows on me. It’s just one of those albums. I didn’t pick it as the top doom album of the year on my list (Salome took that spot) but the more I think about it, V might go down as a classic before Terminal. It just creeps up on you. And you’ve captured its essence very well in this review. Great read.
This is for certain one of my favs this year!
hey eric,
what’s the best way to contact you ?
defo interested.
This is the 7″ I have (a few copies left):
http://www.metal-archives.com/release.php?id=36699
get in touch: derubermensch@hotmail.com
Cosmo, will you please write a book about metal? I don’t care what genre or what specific content you choose, but I’ve read enough fair-to-crappy books to know that your blog posts would make really good reading in a longer format.
I’m not just trying to be your best pal; I, too, write about music, albeit on a smaller scale, and so I appreciate folks whose insights really resonate. Case in point: I recently picked up the Unearthly Trance album and, on first listen, wasn’t impressed. I read this post of yours, went back to it, and found that I heard it through your words, so to speak, and had a completely different listening experience.
Ain’t that enough to convince you to go big?
Cheers, brother…
Donald – Your words are unnecessarily flattering! I don’t know if I have a book about metal in me. I would need two things: (a) something to say that’s book-length, and (b) time. Right now I have neither, so the prospect of a book seems distant. But thank you for the support and the idea. Maybe if the stars align, it can happen.