The act of creation – that moment where nothing becomes something – has always struck a chord with me (absolutely no pun intended). The process of how various creatives go from a desire to make something of their own to the finished product will forever fascinate me, especially given that no two accomplish that task the same exact way. You would normally assume an progressive black metal band would start with a story or a riff, and in part you would be correct. However, it’s the feelings and the surreal liminality that elevates New England’s Obsidian Tongue to something resplendent. Eclipsing Worlds of Scorn, out now via Profound Lore Records, masters all the things (big & little) you expect from expansive, atmospheric black metal: sonic journeys, riffs that feel excavated from the core of the earth (preferably beneath a forest), screams that feel like the last sound a human makes before beholding the ineffable terror of the ancient evil, and those little melodies that lodge in your head like Paul Bunyan’s axe.
What elevates Obsidian Tongue’s fourth record isn’t every little thing; it’s the completeness of the package, sure, but the feelings it stirs up and practically demands the listener to grapple with. Thankfully, the band operate with a sense of duality in all things: immediacy and depth, beauty and horror, and also the feeling of a concept record without silly concepts like stories, as vocalist/guitarist Brandan Hayter shares:
“There was actually a quite conscious interest and effort on our part mentioned there – the feeling of a concept album without a full-fledged concept or story super-imposed onto a body of music that does not and could not perfectly animate a logical story. To me our music feels much more like the cover art: an alluring abstraction both soothing and unsettling, various resemblances to real life things that are there and then not there, depending how your eyes focus or the lighting around you. In spite of this, we’re compelled to pace and sequence our albums to make it feel like a cohesive series of events or stream of consciousness, a journey in sound – just one with no dialog or story line, only the emotional imprints.”
Even their name comes from a notion of liminality. Rather than screaming about trite notions of devils or other corpse-paint-adjacent themes, their name comes from the idea of giving a voice to the darkness within and around, as a sort of emotional exorcism as enlightenment. If that sounds high-brow, it can be; however, Hayter wants this to be as much about catharsis as possible, and that continues to fuel their creative fires:
“There is a detectable and tangible nucleus in the middle of our catalogue, which serves as a way to not only keep that youthful energy alive and well within, but to keep every new compositional effort tethered to the old. The interesting part is this thing we speak of in the center, that itself is indeed multi-faceted. There is a strong emphasis and priority for the cathartic, almost purging approach, but there are other sides concerning the progressive and psychedelic elements, various forms of ‘heaviness,’ building the proprietary collection of melodic voicings. Because we want to manifest this imagined style of music that is several things at once, there are many different spots for us to possibly land when we’re seeking out the next interpretation or illustration.”
“From each perch and peak,” he adds, “different amounts of each side of the crystal are visible. What we can see dictates the basis for each new recording. Basically, each record will sound at least a little, but possibly a lot different, and the songs themselves will be paced and sequenced differently, but those underlying emotional and stylistic principles will be intact.”
There’s a lot of bones to dig into in that quote, but I’ll let Hayter speak more about how archeology plays into their creative fuel, in a surprising way:
“The feeling comes first, the consuming urge to play something new and powerful on guitar, something that doesn’t exist yet. People like to draw little parallels between writing music and other art mediums, often painting or cinema. I recognize the novelty of this, but I disagree with it because ultimately it doesn’t actually make sense. I personally compare it to archeology. You’re digging, your instrument is the shovel, you’re sure as hell there’s a fossil underneath you, but you have to find it first. When the shovel hits bone, you fucking know it, and as you clear out the spot, you can see which part of the skeleton you hit. A vertebrae, a tail, ribs, or skull. It doesn’t always start with the skull, sometimes you uncover the middle first. But the unarguable fact is once you uncover some piece of this beast, you know exactly which direction to dig to uncover the rest of it. It takes time, but at least you are 100% about which direction to find more bones. That’s the guiding concept when writing, and that’s why I write alone. When a first piece is good, there’s no question or discussion about what else has to be done.”
Regarding how that plays into the thematic here, Obsidian Tongue continue to witness the world around them and reflect on how it diverges and parallels internal struggles and growth. The word he and I keep coming back to is brought to you by the best Slipknot song ever, “Duality,” [fight me]; thankfully, he describes it better than I ever could.
“[The record] explores some pretty universally heavy matters [abstractly]. Each song is tied together by a resounding emphasis on duality. In the case of such dark music, it’s the duality of darkness, and condemnation, and hate. The darkness you see and condemn and hate in the outside world, and the kind you feel and hate inside yourself. The uncharted territory between these things, the details unspoken. The duality of the conscious mind judging what it sees while the subconscious judges the conscious, as humanity collectively refuses to truly look inward and find the origins of their rage and misery.”
Eclipsing Worlds of Scorn is out now, and you can order it from Profound Lore Records. Follow Obsidian Tongue on Instagram for future updates.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Sintra
