Ghast - May the Curse Bind

August 11, 2010

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The start of an album is important. It is what listeners of the album hear the most; most listens begin with the beginning, but few end with the end. Like the first sentence of a book, it signals intent and the worth of the experience ahead.

May the Curse Bind (Todestrieb, 2008; 2LP reissue by Flenser, 2010) has a beautiful start. It begins with a lonely squall of feedback, then heads straight into vocals, blastbeats, and guitars sawing away. No intro, no riffs to set the table – this film’s first shot reveals the listener strapped down to a song called “Crawl, Blighted and Afraid”.

The lyrics are indicative. Their first two lines are the setup

To the kindred lost of hope
I speak these words:

to a cruel joke. The kindred lost of hope won’t find any:

A war will come
And we will cry in pain.

The vocals gasp out these syllables, forcing them into a maelstrom rushing by. This is not an elegant, rhythmic delivery. It is ugly and desperate, and it fits.

“Crawl, Blighted and Afraid”
[audio: GHAST_CRAWL.mp3]

Ugly and desperate only goes so far, though. Skill makes visions, including ugly and desperate ones, come alive. Here skill is not directed outwards (i.e., “look at me”), but inwards towards propelling an organism through unforgiving terrain. It races across plains, walks on roads, and climbs up many hills. Much of this record occurs at a doomy trudge, but without the finality typical of doom metal. Guitars do not wallow in heaviness; they are restless, searching, like hungry ghosts.

Spirits haunt this record. They do not come from Judeo-Christian notions of God and Satan, or the esoteric occult some resort to as a substitute. They come from the self, and, interestingly, they may or may not exist. “Hexed Under Moon” begins with the couplet “I have been drifting as a spirit / But I am still gripping to mankind”. Then it pleads, “Let me rise and leave this corpse”.

Contrast with “Evoke Spiritless Hell”, which is as unsentimental as it gets:

Show them that it will not be forgotten.
Make it tell in the eyes of every man and beast.
When they reach for the bread, let them taste the mould.
And when lips part, make them hear scorn.
May all that they smell be stale blood
And sweat as we bury our closest.

This is the war of life, set to hard, lean verse. No engineer has sanded off the edges. Feedback shrieks, drums thrum with the metal of cymbals, and guitars claw through dirt. They do so, even when lost of hope, because it’s all they know how to do. Only the letter “I” separates “terroir” from “terror”.

“Hexed Under Moon”
[audio: GHAST_HEXED.mp3]

— Cosmo Lee

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