Swallowed - Lunarterial (2014)^{Release ID: 33257}

An initial listen to Swallowed's "Lunarterial" left me somewhat dumbfounded and confused I must admit. From Vinny's effusive description of the album in the feature thread's introduction this was apparently right up my street, yet I really wasn't feeling it. The disconnection was so pronounced that I really doubted my own ears and my interpretation of what I had heard. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I persisted and have now clocked up four or five listens over the last few days, both through intently concentrated listenings and as background whilst doing other tasks. Whilst my initial reticence has been alleviated somewhat, the truth is, I am still not completely sure how I feel about this, or even if I will ever be able to make a definitive judgement on my appreciation of it. I think this is one of those albums where there are moments that make me think "OK, right. Now here we go" when things click and fall into place and show glimpses of the album I envisioned getting at the beginning, but on the flipside there are also parts of seeming random chaos that literally make me want to turn it right down in order to lessen the discomfort I am feeling.

Anyway, this is an album that draws on a number of extreme metal influences, old-school death metal, death doom, disso-death, war metal and even drone metal, all combining to produce an, undoubtedly intentional, disconcerting feeling that all is not well or right with the world. To this end, at least with me, this was inordinately successful, although the effect was to alienate me from what I was hearing rather than drawing me into its aural maelstrom. The transitions from doomy oppressiveness to outright blackened violence overlayed with jagged shards of dissonance just overwhelm me I am afraid. At times the band sound a lot like Mayhem at their most experimental, a phase of the norwegian black metal legends that I have never been a big fan of. In an inversion of Vinny's view it seems, my favourite track is actually the 25-minute closer, "Libations" which appeals to the doom and drone fan in me and within the drone-y confines of which the band's tendencies towards dissonance makes more sense to me and if it had been released as a stand alone EP I may even have toyed with the idea of purchasing it.

I would claim to be a fan of extreme metal, but I guess an album that really pushes deeply into unconventionalism such as this, makes me question whether that is truly the case. Things still have to make sense to me and for many stretches "Lunarterial" really doesn't. "Libations" aside, which is actually really growing on me, I can't in all honesty say that I would return to this in the future.

“Caverncore”, the 2010’s movement borne out of bands taking the sounds of Incantation and maxing out the reverb was my bag at the time. Having notched up around two decades of listening to death metal already, this sub-genre at least gave me something new to listen to that walked the fine line between blackened death metal and death doom. Except, depending on the levels of saturation the average death metal fan was willing to go to into this realm, the frantic squall of Portal was to be found in the darkest corners of this new soundscape. Bands like Finland’s Swallowed, had zero qualms about taking the extremity of metal’s most alienating sounds and incorporating them alongside more traditional tropes.

My theme for the feature releases I have picked this month has been single album bands who split thereafter. A “tragedy” themed month, I guess. This certainly resonates with Swallowed. The duo of Ville Kojonen (drums and vocals) and Samu Salovaara (guitars and vocals) employed a dirge of bassists for Lunarterial as well as guest drummers, guitarists and vocalists. In essence they created a real moment in time record given that not all those same musicians (five of them) would likely be in the same studio as the two mainstays of the band. As such, Lunarterial is a one-of-a-kind record within a one-of-a-kind sub-genre. I have no idea who is babbling the tormented vocals on each track, who is torturing the guitar, punishing the drums or contributing to the maelstrom of chaos that constitutes this beastly record.

Far from being a total abandonment of order, Lunarterial had a very set and individual path set out for itself. The fact that this path may have been an aberration to many potential listeners mattered not. You can easily hear the death metal, you can track the doomy pacing and reel at the blackened, caustic guitar sounds, but can you fathom the depths of depravity behind the heinous mix that is done across the record? Unlike an art-based project, which is how I view Imperial Triumphant, Swallowed simply strive to immerse the listener in chaos, leaving them to fathom what they can. Tracks like the twenty-five-minute closer, ‘Libations’ are a stretch too far even for me, yet I absolutely am not surprised that this album not only takes me to the limits of my love of extremity but also seeks to push me out of my comfort zone.