Alcahest are a new outfit from French soil, a mysterious duo consisting of the (human?) beings M (who wrote and performed all instrumental contributions) and J (lyrics and voices, and arrangements). The duo finished a first mini-album in Spring 2021, with Drakkar Productions taking care of this four-track EP.
I would like to refer to my review on Stasis (https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/nihil-impvlse) if you want to investigate about the history of this great project by Francesco Di Stasio.
(older release, yet always worth being promoted and supported)
I have never disliked the Noise scene, even though about half of the (sub) genres within this scene are incomprehensible to me. However, some I do like enormously. I am not going to sum up the ones I like or dislike, but I can honestly say that Gates Of Hypnos, one of the most open-minded and darkened labels nowadays (run by Sado Ritual’s Przemysław ‘Sadox’ Grochowski), did surprise me several times before.
In a philosophic way – and hey, I am not trying to set up any discussion about it – but mankind’s ‘inner self’ is always like a travel into one’s identity, a quest to discover your own raison d’être, a confrontation with monstrous entities, nothing else but caused by your own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, and so on. Are there any supernatural powers – gods or deities, if you want – to enlighten the path we’re crawling on to reach the end? Is our inner self, being a ‘dungeon’, able to trespass the limitations, to cross the borders of our personal expectations and conversances?
Ángel Chicote is a talented musician from Spanish soil, whom you might know from his current or previous collaborations as / in e.g. Graveyard Of Souls, Mass Burial, Aural Butchery or Ad Nebula Nigra, amongst others. Ángel is also the human being behind Ornamentos Del Miedo (meaning something like ‘ornaments of fear’), a project that was formed somewhere in 2017.
Not that very long ago, I got in touch with Chris, a nice person who runs the amazing label Depressive Black Ambient Records. I was surprised by what this label did release as from the start: great works through obscure and oppressive, ominous and odious sounds from beyond the putrid abysses. Destruction and self-mutilation, hate and self-hatred, fury and nostalgia; this label doesn’t share joy or happiness…
I won’t go way too deep into the matter, but RS-28 Sarmat has to do with a quite young intercontinental nuclear missile manufactured in the Russian Federation, able to devastate vast areas all around our oh so beautiful and beloved planet. Boom!
It would be too easy to call Withered Land a side-project of Bleeding Malice, but take notice that this Belarussian act was formed very recently by a member of Bleeding Malice, bassist / keyboardist / lyricist / composer / visual artist Olga Kann (she’s also the woman behind the intriguing Space / Drone / Noise / Ambient project Cryo Depth). For this project, she has been assisted by Bleeding Malice colleague and vocalist Alexander Rabets.
I have been thinking about how to start the former release, over and over again. The reason: both muSICKians involved – sorry, musicians, I mean. But after re-writing my introduction a couple of times, I thought it would just be fun / honest / easy / clear / whatever… Whatever… I’ll keep it simple and to-the-core…
PS: this introduction was like a copy-paste of the former review, haha.
