Posts Tagged ‘Black Abyss Invocation’

Roman Numeral / Machine Tribe Recordings – 24th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Having premiered ‘Opilione’ just over a week ago as a taster for this blackest of black sonic expulsions, I’ve now had some time to digest the album in its entirety. And it’s an acrid, acidic tang of bile which burns the throat and scorches the trachea, and a bilious discomfort which emanates from every noxious moment of this absolutely hellish effort.

The Finnish duo’s Bandcamp simply describes them as ‘BLACK VOID NOISE’, and it’s hard to better that, really. Black Abyss Invocation, which essentially launches Vomitriste phase two, having drawn the curtain on phase one with the Droneworks (2022-2024) compilation.

Black Abyss Invocation is relentlessly dark. In fact, it goes beyond being merely ‘dark’: darkness connotes an absence of light. Here, Vomitriste create a negative balance, subtracting, subtracting, endlessly subtracting, sucking out both light and air, like a black hole which drags the listener into a vortex of perpetual purgatory, while hanging over the smouldering pits of hell.

‘Opilione’ is entirely representative: each of the album’s six compositions last between five and eight minutes, providing ample time for the agonizing atmospherics to wrack every one of the senses in the most torturous fashion, and seeming to manifest in physical ways as you find your skin crawling and your muscles tense.

The album opens with ‘Void Sermon’ – a rumbling blanket of sound that’s between dark ambience and harsh noise wall at first, before vocals – rasping, demonic screams, shit-your-pants inhuman – roar in before the very bowels of hell open wide and drag you down, down, down. Void Sermon? Void bowels would be equally apt.

From here, it’s less about progression, as slow subtraction. Listening to Black Abyss Invocation, I find myself reflecting on various methods of punishment and torture from throughout the ages – rat torture, for instance, or coffin torture, or the breaking wheel. The slow, agonising tortures which almost invariably resulted in a protracted and extremely painful death. Or perhaps, one I discovered on a visit to York dungeons, the ‘blood eagle’, referenced in Norse literature. Certainly, by the arrival of ‘Fleshwards’, on feels as if one’s ribs are being severed from the spine with a sharp tool, and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of “wings” – because this is brutal, cacophonous noise and howls of anguish echo from subterranean caverns without mercy. To survive to the end of the album is to still be awake and alive in the hell that is life on earth in 2025.

Black Abyss Invocation is truly the stuff of nightmares: there is no escape from the abyss, and there is none more black.

AA

a3185354594_10

Aural Aggravation is extremely proud to present a new exclusive video premiere in the shape of ‘Opilione’ by Vomitriste .

We promise work from  the furthest reaches beyond the mainstream, and this is it.

Vomistriste comment: ‘Opilione’ probably represents the darkest corners of Black Abyss Invocation as a whole, encapsulating the claustrophobic anguish and pervasive dread that discolours the entirety of the record. During the recording session, this is where everything ultimately clicked together seamlessly and solidified this new dismal and murky direction of the band. Murmuring words and uttering phrases that shall not be written on top of ever-evolving vortex-esque sonics… It’s apparently possible to scare yourself solely by being who you are and doing what you must.”

‘Opilione’ is dark and nasty – and we love it.

Vomitriste began their aural trek in 2022 by means of crafting colossal, noisy drones and profound dark ambient, and went on to release six albums under that motif during the following two years. While the duo’s visceral output was greeted with open arms by many and their signature sound found new aspects to itself through life shows, midway through 2024 the project came to its natural conclusion. With the aim of putting one last effort out under the moniker, the two musicians decided to instead leave all pre-conceived notions of what the band should be out of their mutual headspace, and begun composing the idea of doing something else entirely with a fresh approach and open mindset. The end result was something unexpected, which left the duo initially perplexed, but soon turned out to be a restart of sorts for the band. The previous records were lumped under the collective title of Droneworks (2022-2024) and now, a new chapter has begun.

Black Abyss Invocation is the first album under this newfound direction, introducing Vomitriste anew as a vessel of grating and pervasive cacophonous dread it was always meant to be. Certain aspects of their previous doings are present, but the seminal orientation across the record lies at the perimeters of black ambient and death industrial, taking elements from black metal and noise and mashing those together with dark ambient and electronics, with the inclusion of ritualistic and trance-inducing, jarring rhythms and waypast ominous atmospheres. The void has opened its maw once more, and instead of balancing on its rim, Vomitriste dove straight into the unknown without hesitation only to emerge from the opposite end speaking a malformed and atrocious language while sporting only motes of resemblance of its past self.

The six songs making up Black Abyss Invocation were created in a single session overnight, and left its creators in awe of what they accidentally stumbled upon. The sonic terrains discovered were nothing sort of hostile and unfathomably haunting, yet the kind that lures you deeper and deeper into its uncharted areas on every passing second. Where once stood a wall signifying the ultimate point of unease and anxiety, now a vast black ocean spread out, beckoning both the band as well as its listeners to wade into it until reaching neck-deep and suddenly being pulled down by something inexplicable and unnamed. Where there once was scarce light, now there is none.

Vomitriste Promo 2