Striborg/Veil of Darkness - Cold Winter Moon/In the Valley of the Shadow of De [Finsternis Productions - 2010] | This is a furious, bleak and sometimes grimly experimental black metal and pitch black ambience split that features two projects by experimental and creative Tasmania based black metal entity know as Sin Nanna. Firstly we have seven tracks from his more know project Striborg that speclizers in a very distinct brand of lo-fi black metal, then we have six tracks from his more dark ambient and creepy experimental project Veil of Darkness. The split runing time totals an hour and twenty one minutes, so really you have two full lengths here So first up with have the Striborg side of the split which is entitled “ Cold Winter Moon” and features material from 1997 which was original released in tape only format back in 97, and this is the first cd release of the 35 minute long album. The seven tracks that make-up the release are mainly very lo-fi clamouring and furious slices of blacked and slight off-kilter metal that consists of mainly of: overloaded and speed up drum machine rhythms, cruel smog’s of blacked guitar blackness and mean spirited blacked vocal barks and bays. A few of the tracks go into more experimental, drumless and unwell hazes, or doomed organ wonders, to rudimentary & bleakly creative keyboard judders 'n’ spikes. But even the more straight forward black metal tracks will probably be a little to wonky & off-kilter for most fans of plan black metal. You’ve really got to have a liking of more blackly experimental/ lo-fi outsider music to enjoy this, and to my ears it’s great to hear this early release which has a lot of bleak and nastily off-kilter charm….but it’s very, very ultra grim and lo-fi so be prepared!. Moving onto the Veil Of Darkness side of the split and this is entitled “In the Valley Of the Shadow of Death” and this material also comes from 1997. The six often dense and bleak tracks are based around a grim and horror fed mixture of: weaving church organ dwells, slow creaking and reverbed guitar texturing, loads of creepy effects, lo-fi and analogue ultra dark synth sustains ‘n’ cobweb dwells, effect licked creepy vocal textures and whispers, wind chime grim attacks and the odd rises into quite seared almost blacked noise electronics. I guess you’d call it crude and lo-fi pitch black ambience, with atmospheric and experimental edges to it. Along with also a few touches of very sludge or slowed down industrial textures, and slightly bleak noise smarts. On the whole this half of the split is very rewarding, yet offten very unwell & wonky in it's unfold.
So in summing this is a very ultra grim, blacked yet rewarding split release that offers up firstly Striborgs bleakly lo-fi, Often clamouring and off-kilter blacked metal song craft. Then we have the creepy, dense, tar black and wonky charms of Veil Of Darkness. Certainly a must have item if you already a fan of Sin Nanna’s work, but also a must have if you enjoyed ultra grim, wonky blacked metal and thick sludgy unwell atmospherics. It seems that this is only available direct from Sin Nanna & his Finsternis Productions- so do a search on eBay where he has a shop set-up Roger Batty
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