Chiral - "Part V (The Gazer's Throne)" (Premiere)
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”You’re not frustrated anymore?”
”I’m not lost any more.”
”How did you do that?”
”The same way anything lost gets found – I stopped looking.”
This exchange, which comes from a conversation between Sun Kwon and John Locke from an episode of Lost, appears at the end of “Part II (The Haze),” the second track on one-man Italian black metal project Chiral’s stunning sophomore full-length Gazing Light Eternity. In many ways that sample provides the ideal lens through which to consider the album as a whole. Chiral plays a lush, deeply emotional brand of folk/black metal in the same vein as Agalloch or Falls of Rauros, but without the sense of melancholy that pervades so much of music made in a similar vein. Instead, the record has a peaceful, introspective aura about it. Whatever the gazer was seeking at the beginning of the album, he ends up finding it – presumably by deciding to no longer look for it.
Gazing Light Eternity will be reissued on cassette by Fólkvangr Records on June 16, and includes a newly recorded bonus song, the lovely, wistful “Part V (The Gazer’s Throne).” Sounding a bit like something that would have fit seamlessly on Opeth’s Morningrise, the all-acoustic track feels like a departure both musically and tonally from what came before it, but it ends the album so perfectly that it’s difficult to imagine it seeming complete without it.
When asked about the new track and how it fits with the overall theme of the record, Chiral had this to say:
“This song was born as a mere acoustic re-interpretation of ‘Gazing Light Eternity’ opener, “The Gazer.” Indeed, the first couple of verses are just the same. The remaining one, instead, had been written down at the same time when I was first in touch with Mark (Fólkvangr Records). We decided, I offered it and he was more than happy to accept, to include a bonus track to fulfill this album.
As a matter of fact, at that time, I was experimenting as well as listening to a shit-ton of indie/acoustic stuff and I wanted so badly to craft something reminding that specific style, though I’m not sure I managed to do that. In particular, I must admit “The Gazer’s Throne” has been inspired by the likes of Daughter and their very first EP, His Young Heart. I do have a thing for this band, [by the way].
That being said, the song itself is supposed to adorn and possibly complete that brief voyage about “…The evolution and perception of the perpetual flow of time on men, places and memories.” The reason is that the album, in its original form ended in a, let’s say, positive and hopeful way. But things change, and so does your perspective about the story you had told just few months ago. So I did need to add this (alternative) finale and give the whole thing a new, dramatic yet gloomy closure.
I sure didn’t want people to think I had become less pessimistic than before! Still, I’m pretty sure that pretty much anyone who’s familiar with Chiral’s previous works would be surprised by this new track – hopefully in a good way.”
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