Caïna Wishes to "Take Me Away From All This Death" (Early Track Premiere)
English black metal experimentalist Caïna has never been one to stagnate. From his earliest works as a raw black metal entity to the post-rock which defined his early albums (Mourner is an all-time favorite) to the industrial antics of his more recent work, solo artist Andy Curtis-Brignell’s kaleidoscopic take on black metal portrays the genre as an idea more than a strict set of rules.
Upcoming Caïna album Take Me Away From All This Death, the project’s ninth album and yet another installment in an endless litany of recent releases and rediscoveries, takes elements from Curtis-Brignell’s career and puts them in a blender. Keeping microscopic parts of his sound and throwing expectation away, this new work is undeniably Caïna in the sense that it is yet another chameleonic change, but in a very real way it is not a Caïna album at all, and in that lies Curtis-Brignell’s brilliance.
From an outside perspective, Caïna was never meant to be just one thing, and the heavy post-and-goth rock misery found on Take Me Away From All This Death‘s title track, which is exclusively streaming ahead of the album’s release below, exemplifies the album in which it is found. This isn’t metal, but it is heavy like a metal song, and the subtle nods to Curtis-Brignell’s black metal past found within the music act as a reminder of his roots, but Caïna is a very different act now. Don’t go into this expecting another Some People Fall or even Christ Clad in White Phosphorus, but that’s always been the point. Listen to “Take Me Away From All This Death” below.
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From the artist:
Take Me Away From All This Death, the song and the album, is my attempt to funnel the horror and unacknowledged grief we’ve all been experiencing over the last year into something I feel is actually kind of fun and goofy whilst still being flamboyantly gothic in a way nothing I’ve made before has been. Instead of the naked, raw pain of some of my previous work, I was inspired by a single scene from Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie to make an album about how ‘dying’ and then running away with a sexy vampire is actually way better than currently existing under the spiralling death cult of capitalism. I think Francine Bridge’s spectacular cover art really sells that concept an integral way. I’d run away with our androgynous cover star! (Don’t tell my wife I said that).
Although it was made quickly, conceived and created inside about three months, it was extremely stressful as I set myself a tight deadline to make the only full-length (despite the reductive and inaccurate ‘bedroom BM’ appellation I get in some quarters) I’ve made entirely at home since 2007. It’s my most intensely melodic album since Temporary Antennae and draws influence from most corners of 1980s alternative music as well as stuff I’ve enjoyed more recently like Katatonia – where a lot of people get more extreme in order to ‘get out of their comfort zone’ I’ve kind of done the opposite because I’ve been mostly bathing in filthy noise for most of the last decade.
Take Me Away From All This Death releases March 8th on Bandcamp.
