If you were to pluck OG black metal fans from the past and drop them in the present, they might be horrified to hear what the genre has been turned into by artists who just don’t care to play by the rules. This split LP from Blut Aus Nord and Ævangelist, two acts who warp the parameters of black metal almost beyond recognition, drives that point home vividly. With their previous records, both bands have demonstrated that it’s possible to present myriad new shades of grimness. Here, each group elevates its craft to another level.
The first half of Codex Obscura Nomina consists of four pieces by Blut Aus Nord that fall under the title “Spectral Sonic Waves (The Sound Is an Organic Matter).” The long-running French quartet (whose name translates roughly as “blood from the north”) makes no bones about its disregard for black metal purism, flat-out declaring its intention to “erase all preconceived ideas of black metal— and extreme music in general.” It’s hard to find any reason to argue that these four songs don’t succeed in that mission. If you’re coming at this release from the band’s most recent work, 2014’s Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry, be prepared to have your expectations shattered.
Drawing far more heavily from avant-garde, classical, and industrial influences this time, Blut Aus Nord bend pitch to such a degree that they almost manage to erase all preconceived notions of harmony too. At times, you might get the impression that the entire mix was run through into a harmonizer effect—but close inspection reveals that this band pays far too much attention to detail to rely on sheer sonic overload. And, in dramatic counterpoint to the last album, bandleader Vindsval, electronics player W.D. Field, and drummer Thorns eschew traditional black metal drumming, leaving far more space to hear every microtonal nuance in the meshwork of sounds.
By the same token, the band (which also includes bassist GhÖst) has taken great care to manipulate the instruments so that it’s hard to tell the difference between guitar, bass, keyboards, ambient samples, or voices run through effects. And the results are delightfully queasy from start to finish, landing in an ambiguous emotional space that feels like new territory for black metal. “Infra-Voices Ensemble,” the final track of Blut Aus Nord’s side of this album, goes even further than the previous three. With its programmed beats and half-discernible melodic keyboard progression buried in a snowstorm of effects, “Infra-Voices Ensemble” sounds like the band imagined My Bloody Valentine remixed into a dance track by Justin Broadrick.
Consisting of a single 22-minute track titled “Threshold of the Miraculous,” the Ævangelist half of this album contains more traditional black metal elements than Blut Aus Nord’s half. But that doesn’t mean that Ævangelist, an American duo that’s been around for way less time than Blut Aus Nord, isn’t being ambitious in its own way. In terms of scope, “Threshold of the Miraculous” takes an obvious step forward from the band’s most recent album, last year’s Enthrall to the Void of Bliss. This time, the band stretches its trademark blast beats, double bass drum volleys, miasmic clouds of keyboard and guitar, and monstrous growling into through-composed symphony. At times, the music veers off onto lengthy tangents with spoken-word vocals. During the second spoken section, frontman Ascaris delivers his vocals in a near-rap. “Eternity depends on this!” he declares over a hissing avant-industrial beat and Prong/Godflesh-style bassline as upward-pitching ambient swells threaten to engulf all the other instruments.
Just like other side of this split, the effect is queasy, but more forcefully so. (It’s probably not the best idea to listen to this tune with a hangover.) Clearly, Ævangelist meant to intertwine these disparate threads into a larger whole, but the majority of “Threshold” covers much of the same ground as “Meditation of Transcendental Evil,” the 14-minute piece that closes Enthrall. And compared to the sonic unification of the Blut Aus Nord songs, “Threshold” tends to meander. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, this split sets the high water mark for black metal’s capacity to accommodate an infinite array of sounds.
