Following the announcement of their forthcoming album, DØDHEIMSGARD are back with their extraordinary first single ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’. The 10+ minute track weaves a sombre tapestry that incorporates elements of various subgenres from the world of extreme metal and thematically explores ideas of epistemological dualism.
DEATH HOME GARDENs Vicotnik about the single:
“The whole album revolves subjectively around perception, experience, psychology, objective/subjective reality vs external pressure, tropes, taboos, the laws of motion/causality which influences one’s life. The subjective perception of reality vs the objective causal effects of reality and how they are bound interact. Epistemological dualism.”
Watch Abyss Perihelion Transit here:
Accompanying the single is a video and cover art by visionary artist Costin Chiorenau, who brings to life the disparate and incredibly celebratory existence of Black Medium Current’s first single. Both the song and the video develop into something truly visionary over the course of the ten-minute running time, both in the acoustic and in the visual context. Explaining the video, Costin said: “I’ve been following Dødheimsgard for 20 years now and the genius of Vicotnik has always attracted my utmost attention and at the same time been a huge inspiration, both musically and aesthetically. I’ve always found Dødheimsgard to be more of an artistic movement than a black metal band, another aspect that fuels my creativity, and I feel fulfilled that I can share all this passion with the art video and single cover of Abyss Perihelion Transit. could express.
Victonik continues:
“I guess mental health, or rather instead of health, let’s call it mental condition is a big topic on this record. Not as in a complaining way, or as a good or bad notion, but rather a subject’s study of his own psychology (en)during everything.
Like the ambiguity of Being. What is Being? Is it a meta-physical stratum of subjective emotionally fuelled notions or is Being just explaining a physical object that is, therefore being. Epistemologically I guess these lyrics dwell a lot on naïve realism vs representational realism. Cognitivism vs behaviourism, and then bringing it all to an artist context obviously. So, it is experiential renditioning, not solution driven.”
When I first heard it, I felt that void left behind by the desperation of the root-sense of old structures of perception. That void, which shakes the black matter foundation every time when manifestations tuned with and born in the past overleap the fresh sight of the present which fights hard to penetrate the dense walls of repetition. The main characters of this movie are the absence created by the vanishing old, the observer in search of a new fitting cloth of identity for its avatar and the desperate need of giving shape to the yet-not assimilated nor understood living new.
Secondary characters are different types of glitches in the matrix between self-imposed reality and the golden mean dream state, measuring systems for various types of space found between the layers of perception and the omnipresent shadow. These characters are interfering one with another in a multiverse of contrasts between defined and undefined, forming a brick-dust flavoured whole, at times exotic, at times smoked in bitter nihil. These characters are also the topics spoken but the energy of this song, by the voice of now and I consider the proper ones to be dissected through art.”
Black Medium Current, to be released on April 14th via Peaceville Records, is the sixth studio album by Norwegian avant-garde pioneers Dødheimsgard. From their influential and successful beginnings as a raw and gritty black metal band formed during the ‘second wave’ of the early/mid 90’s, Dødheimsgard have grown into a truly eclectic giant with each new release; a band now unquestionably adorned with mastery of mood and texture through complex, dark metallic wonder and unnerving eloquence.
Black Medium Current continues on the path set by 2015’s monumental and widely acclaimed A Umbra Omega album; itself a deeply poignant and powerful release of great maturity and insight.
Infused with atmosphere, Et Smelter opens the gaping maw of the abyss that swallows the listener whole and digests them through a multitude of influences. The distinctive, solemn vocals evoke old Black Metal qualities, but viewed through a modern lens as we weave through the forlorn It Does Not Follow before diving into Det Tomme Kalde Morke.
Thematically, the album deals with the idea of authenticity, the fight of free will against determinism and what this means for our moral responsibility. In ‘Black Medium Current’, Dødheimsgard also want to question the term ‘responsibility’ as a concept.
In keeping with the questioning nature of Dødheimsgard, the band explores ideas in which, in trying to free ourselves from a state of existential despair and confusion, we give up our own freedom in return. They suggest that, in a philosophical sense, confusion and despair, however difficult to bear, are necessary to challenge one’s intellectual honesty.
About the artwork:
“To dream (abstract reality) is Purpose, matter (physical reality) is the fabric in which to research and fulfil the purpose.”
“The front cover shows empty space and the building blocks of reality in the sense of what is and the potential of what can be. It is easy to view this cover through the lenses of philosophical realism, and it has contingency towards that indeed. But the cover itself, just by existing, also conveys an abstraction towards something that came into existence from an idea. Is an idea contingent on the physical realm to be expressed? Or is the physical realm itself an idea from self-servitude? Brought forth from a mind in order to study itself, interact and further the understanding of its existence. A sort of Platonic universalis through an artistic lens. Idea, not as mental but as abstract, existing independently of both the mental activity itself and sensible particulars.”
Black Medium Current’ track listing:
01 – A Meltdown [10:19]
02 – The Pain of the Mindspinner
03 – Interstellar Nexus [08:01]
04 – It Does Not Follow [08:24]
05 – Voyager [01:46]
06 – Hello [09:37]
07 – The Empty Cold Morke [07:35]
08 – Abyss Perihelion Transit [10:59]
09 – Eternal Rest [05:13]
Dødheimsgard are:
Vicotnik – Vocals and Guitar
LE Måløy – Bass
Tommy “Guns” Thunberg – Lead Guitar
Myrvoll – Drums
Band-Links:
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