Trepanerungsritualen - ᛉᛦ - Algir; eller Algir i Merkstave

Album: ᛉᛦ - Algir; eller Algir i Merkstave

Artist: Trepanerungsritualen

Label: Cold Spring

Catalogue no: CSR275CD

Tracklist:

     1.    ᛉ

     2.    ᛦ

The only problem with waiting in anticipation for a release is that it could end up being something of a disappointment and leave a bitter taste behind. In my case, this new release by Thomas Ekelund’s death/occult/ritual ambient Trepanerungsritualen project has been on my radar ever since it was first announced, and I’ve been checking my email every day to see if it’s finally dropped. And lo, it hath arrived and is currently haunting my (very) inadequate laptop speakers.

I needn’t have been so querulous about what it would be like – this is classic occult/ritual ambient, deeply embedded with esoteric streams of power and cold, marrow-freezing winds and atmospherics. These are the invocations practised in the darkest chthonic regions, in the cold wastes of the north, where night reigns over us much of the time and the cold stealthily steals warmth. Here is where malignity and enmity lie, jealous of light and fecundity, colour and profusion.

‘ᛉ’ is the commencement, the alpha point of the invocation, annunciated by a crashing crunch of metal. Then there follows a stream of abstruse flutings along with a reverberating bell, a subterranean appeal to the creative spirits of the undercurrents that inhabit the bottomless chasms and abysses of the world, to lend succour and strength to the celebrant. These streams flow darkly and unheedingly, eternally wafting and wailing through dismal hollows, nothing more than deep breaths of foetid air oozing out of places where entities inimical to life have concealed themselves since matter accreted into what would become the Earth, waiting for the time when darkness engulfs all and the old gods return.  

If ‘ᛉ’ is the darkness incarnate, then ‘ᛦ’ is its opposite, the essential counterbalance of light. This quality also infuses itself into every molecule of matter in existence, whether it’s as a constituent photon of the light of a billion stars whirling within a galaxy, or the shimmering undulations of bioluminescent creatures crawling at the bottom of the nethermost watery abyss. With its manifestation comes the lifting of the veil of illusion to reveal the deepest secrets and mysteries of the Earth and its hidden presiding genius, the intelligence that keeps the positive and negative in balance. A slow exhalation attunes us to the living energy that permeates and animates all, that effervescence which is deeply embedded within everything observable, as we too are made of the star-stuff from which that intelligence emerged aeons ago. Through the deep miasmic effluvium that occupies these fathomless regions, a species of insight sparks off both the light of reason and understanding, the undeniable truth that the light and the dark are one and the same thing, their only difference being that one reveals the exoteric and the other conceals the esoteric. True wisdom is attained through a balance and an alliance of the two, and a reconciliation of their qualities.

This ploughs a totally different furrow than was evident on, say, Perfection & Permanence: this speaks to a deeper strain of mysticism, an ancient path that has been with us since the first men divided existence into this world and the other/underworld. It was seen as the perfected version of this world, attainable only through dying and passing on in this world. Death was viewed differently to how it is now: it wasn’t a bad thing, and the dead would receive honour and riches in that next world.

This is quieter, and definitely more occult, than the death industrial/death ambient I was expecting. There’s more power here too, a coherent gathering of and communion with outside forces, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and its effect is to bring into being a power that transcends any artificial (and ultimately absurd) notions of black and white, good and evil, or of any oppositional dichotomy that we have invented. Humans love to pigeonhole and compartmentalise, but almost inevitably the truth lies somewhere in between, or in the philosophy that opposites must eventually be reconciled before that truth can be discerned.

A step in a different direction (and yet very much a logical evolution), with the very faint shades of Ekelund’s Dead Letters Spell Dead Words hanging around it, and one that deserves two things: your utmost attention and a good sound system (or headphones) to play it through.

Due to be released 9^th September 2019 as a CD in 6-panel digipak, and a 500 copy limited edition 180g black vinyl disc with printed inner sleeve and reverse board outer sleeve.

www.coldspring.co.uk

Also available from the release date will be a digital download:

https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/algir-eller-algir-i-merkstave-csr275cd-lp

Psymon Marshall 2019

Trepanerungsritualen - Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd

Album: Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd (Expanded & Remastered)

Artist: Trepanerungsritualen

Label: Neuropa Records

Catalogue no: NRP67

Tracklist: 

1. Ur Oðinns Sidosår

2. För Svears Väl

3. Blodregn

4. Den Fallne Dómaldrs Lik

5. Elivágar

Descend with me to the unutterably subterranean depths of the Hadean underworld that is the music (and mind) of Trepanerungsritualen, in my opinion one of the most truly original projects to have emerged from the industrial scene in the last decade or so. While there are many outfits to which such descriptors as doomy, dark, diabolical, or unhallowed would apply, in this instance Thomas Ekelund’s darkly oppositional project to his Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words encapsulates the very essences and definitions of these epithets. 

Konung Dómaldr Vid Upsala Hängd (Expanded & Remastered) is just that – an expanded and remastered (by Frederic Arbour of Cyclic Law fame) version of a recording originally released in 2013 on US label Merzbild as a limited edition cassette EP and subsequently in extended 12” form on In Solace Publishing two years later. This new edition features, two new tracks, ‘Ur Oðinns Sidosår’ and ‘Elivágar’ (previously only available on obscure compilations), which brings it up to something like album length. 

Immediately we find ourselves drifting down the Stygian waters through dank tunnels in the opening track, floating to a hellish destination populated by howling nightmares and bellowing horrors. A single accursed bell announces our arrival into this baleful region, signalling eternal torment and endless spiritual darkness, if not actual darkness. This is Sheol, filled not with the agonised screams of the damned, but instead with the oppressive weight of bitterness, dissatisfaction, grief, and remorse. Eternal torment here means a dead immortality of regret, of the heavy blanket of knowledge of a wasted life, and the twisting snakes of guilt.

The original EP’s opening track, ‘För Svears Väl’, tips us into a subterrestrial chasm inhabited by diabolical creations while a guttural voice utters curses and growls against a background of a reverberating drum. ‘Blodregn’ creaks into view, a misshapen creature wheezing arthritically and stalking a desolate corpse-littered plain buffeted by black winds with the shades of soul-devouring birds free-wheeling above. It segues straight into the following track (‘Den Fallne Dómaldrs Lik’) but now the wolves are circling, attracted by the heady aroma of spilt blood. Distantly, buried deep in the background, can just be heard the sounds of industry, belching smoke and bile, poisoning the air, ground, and anything living. Deep snarls waft over our heads, borne by those sulphurous currents, spitting gangrenous death and necrotising disease. Light, as dim and yellowed as it is, flies away to hide itself from the sights – it has no place here, no use or purpose. It is ashamed of, and laments for, its failure.

‘Elivágar’ gusts into existence, with blasts of wind even colder than you thought possible – this is the Hell of legend and myth, the place of suffering, of everlasting self-torment, and eternal self–reproach. There are no flames, no hellfire, and no brimstone, however – the torture and punishment is self-administered, and we’re here not because of the sins we’ve committed but for our sins of omission. We created this place – and for that reason we are forever imprisoned by its walls. It is a place of suffering, a self-defined one, and we haven’t been delegated here by some spiritual deity, but by our own selves. Its desolation is total, its bleakness unrelenting, its ruins blackened by our stink.

An immensely articulate and eloquent travelogue describing the lowermost regions of the hells we fashion for ourselves. Not only that, for me it’s also an indictment of the human condition: as a collective we appear to naturally gravitate towards the dark and unwholesome, but perhaps that’s because it contains more than a measure of the self-knowledge that we require to rise above it. Simplified, we must know the depths in order to appreciate the heights. Light cannot exist without darkness. And, if you’re looking for a champion who’s willing to delineate and articulate the profundities of the ineffably subterranean, then Trepanerungsritualen is that prophet.  

Psymon Marshall 2019.