James Wells
You’ll always find black metallers and pagan neofolkers in the woods. I don’t mean that whenever I go for a walk in woods near me that I happen upon people in cloaks and corpse paint lumbering around clutching instruments, but how often do you see a video where they’re exploring scenes of urban squalor or even indoors? Do you think any of them would last a winter out there – or even a night? Could they construct a shelter, do you think? Could they light a fire, or spear some wild creature to feed themselves, in those threads?
I’d wager not, but Canadian trio Hem Netjer seem more the type to venture into the woods to commune with nature than to live as part of it, and the video captures them meditative contemplative, cross-legged on a large rock.
The last single from their forthcoming debut album, The Song Of Trees, scheduled for release at the end of February 2023, ‘Elemental Cry’ is dark yet somehow celebratory, with dense synths swirling about a thumping tribal beat and overlaid with tense strings and a soaring vocal performance.
The atmosphere is thick and murky, the production favouring the lower and mid-ranged that give the track an earthy feel, and it’s bold and cinematic and it doesn’t really matter if some of it feels a shade cliché with its lyrics about death and trees and moths, because it’s a ‘big’ tune in every way, not just the fact it’s almost six minutes long, and RavenRissy’s vocals are more operatic than folk, and are outstanding and send a shiver down the spine.
A strong song with a strong message, ‘Elemental Cry’ is pretty powerful work that reaches the primal depths of the psyche and speaks to senses long lost in the name of ‘progress’.
Aural Aggravation 