On their cinematically expansive, new, full-length album Mountain Fever, which is out now via Sensory Records, the Israeli, avant-garde metal group Subterranean Masquerade share a musical trek that feels like venturing across dusty plains towards an increasingly beautiful sunrise.
The band mix jubilant, prog-metal riffing with African and Indian percussion sections, a bouzouki, soulfully soaring singing, and more. Throughout all of these riveting dynamic turns, Mountain Fever keeps an overlay of brightness. Whether more danceable, like on album opener “Snake Charmer,” or more mellowed out, like parts of “The Stillnox Oratory,” the record proves exuberant.
“We’re dealing a lot with themes on this album of exile and identity,” vocalist Davidavi “Vidi” Dolev explains. “The former albums of the band—they were all talking about traveling and being a foreigner somewhere else, and longing to be somewhere back home, and reflecting on who we are as we move around through our journey, both geographically and spiritually. The current album is focusing mostly on what happens when a person is finally back home but still has an enormous urge for movement, and it focuses on roots, and family, and longing as an emotion, as something that is spiritual, in a way, and mental.”
The shimmering and energetic record often returns to a relatively quick pace, as though embarking upon an actual journey—or at least watching a captivating representation of one. The music proves strong yet breezy, with a consistent push forward. On “Diaspora, My Love,” album closer “Mångata” (which features the bouzouki), and elsewhere, the music builds into lively crescendos that impart a sense of grounded yet joyful celebration, like reaching the journey’s destination.
“Our theme as a band is—we just like everything,” guitarist Tomer Pink shares. “There is no reason we cannot mix everything all together and make it sound like our own. And this is pretty much what we do.”
Mountain Fever even features an instrument called the bulbul tarang, which is colloquially known as an “Indian banjo.” The ambition underlying the creative process translates into a powerful presentation.
“This time, I feel that we went even further with the arrangements,” Dolev shares. “In the last three albums, we kind of have the same instrumentalists that are coming and playing. I think that the amount of layers that we’ve brought now, with the African brass sections in the album, really managed to capture what we’re trying to do as a live band as well—this elevating kind of sound that will make people gather as a community during the concerts. We are very hopeful that this kind of arrangement will be colorful enough to bring people into our homes and become kind of a tribe when listening together to this music.”
Dolev, Pink, and the others involved in Subterranean Masquerade have personal stakes in the music.
“For me, music is kind of the autobiography, and I write what I feel,” Pink shares. “Mountain Fever was written in a period of time when I was having kind of a hectic time, and for me, this was a release. This was a way to express what I’m feeling, and all these ideas and feelings are getting mixed together.
“I had days when I was happier than others, and days that I felt more somber, and days that I felt more angry, and each one of those days got its own soundtrack. So basically, we try to be expansive, and we try to take the listener through a journey which is not only physical, it’s also spiritual and musical. But at the same time, it’s very much autobiography, and I write the music as I feel it. So, I think one of the things that for me is a guiding line is to just express in music what you feel.”
Watch the video for “Somewhere I Sadly Belong” here:
For more from Subterranean Masquerade, find them on Facebook, Bandcamp, and their official website.
Photo courtesy of Subterranean Masquerade and Yalon Schori.
