by Adrien Begrand

When it comes to lyrics in metal music, few bands have a grasp on subtlety, but then again, it's a genre of musical extremes, so it's no surprise that the lyrical content should follow suit. Consequently, the various forms of metal lyrics shoot off in wildly differing directions: we get the blunt violence of death metal, the psychedelia of stoner rock, the epic themes of power and fantasy metal, the funereal incantations of doom metal, the clever yet perpetually indecipherable lyrics of grindcore, and of course, the overt Satanist/anti-Christian sentiment of black metal. While the words aptly mirror the visceral power felt in the music, moments of real nuance, eloquence, and poeticism seem to be getting more and more rare these days, especially when it comes to the darker themes of black metal.

Selling Satan is harder than it seems. Any corpsepainted kvltist can spout off about the power of his beelzebuddy, and many have over the years, but save for the stirring imagery of Emperor lyricist Ihsahn, the unsettling seriousness of King Diamond, or the harrowing bleakness of Watain, most bands tend to take a much more heavy-handed approach, ending up sounding too overtly shocking, campy (Dimmu Borgir, for example), or even worse, just plain boring. Most of us aren't Satanists, but it would be refreshing now and then to hear from a black metal band that has the ability to convey its lyrics with sincerity and articulacy. It's the same thing listening to a Christian metalcore band; we're not looking to be converted, all we want is a little passion.

Mercifully (mercyfully?), Andrew Curtis-Brignell is one such fella. A self-described practicing Satanist of the LaVey school, as well as a devotee of Aleister Crowley's Thelemic tradition, his one-man project Caïna approaches Satanic theology with introspection, reflection, and a knack for stunning imagery. Coupled with the fact that the 20 year-old Hampshire, England resident crafts his own unique brand of black metal from a far broader musical palette than the majority of his peers have the guts to do, it makes for a stunning combination on his second album, Mourner. Drawing from everything from post rock, to shoegaze, to folk, to noise rock, to ambient drone, to orch pop, to classic black metal, it's a spellbinding, highly eclectic 67 minutes of music that never wears out its welcome, and most impressively, sounds cohesive throughout. But while the music is ominously entrancing, Curtis-Brignell's indelible images move in to deliver the knockout punch, and when that happens, that's when we know we have one of the year's finest albums on our hands.

"I know why birds alight from cables with no-one beneath," Curtis-Brignell croons on the haunting epic "Hideous Gnosis", "Who's on the side of the angels / Who's on the side of Satan?" The song switches genres on us to the point where we're blindsided, transforming from a sparse emotional outpouring in the vein of Xiu Xiu's talented Jamie Stewart to distorted screams and guitars that echo the lo-fi black metal strains of Leviathan, E-bowed guitar melodies acting as a reassuring calm in the sonic storm as the song dissolves into a mass of white noise. "Morgawr" takes a much more minimal approach, the lyrics hinting at something much deeper than the usual fantasy themes as Curtis-Brignell intones, shockingly similar to Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan, "Break yourself on rocks to believe in something more". Rarely does mouth harp sound as evil as it does on "Constantine the Blind", punctuating Curtis-Brignell's acoustic guitar and spoken word delivery, and his falsetto harmonies bring a ghostly, Antony Hegarty-like quality to the a cappella intro of the instrumental "I Reeled in Heaven". Divided into three movements, "Requiem for Shattered Timbers" hints at conventionality, with its ferocious, rapid-fire black metal approach, but the nine-and-a-half-minute track is elevated by the pointed lyrics: "What we thought was evolution… nothing but an arc of piss, and old man under a bridge".

Several tracks on Mourner hint that Caïna is ready to abandon the typical metal constraints for good, and it's there where we hear the true potential of the young Curtis-Brignell. "Permaneo Carmen" and "The Sleep of Reason" both echo the seismic beauty of Justin Broadrick's Jesu, the emotional vocal refrains sounding as hypnotic as the densely layered guitars. Most arresting, though, is the surprisingly upbeat-sounding "Wormwood Over Albion", which sounds inspired by Nick Drake, My Bloody Valentine, and Echo and the Bunnymen all at once, as he concludes the album on an enigmatic note ("The wind shrieks hard against the stone with a loneliness of feeling I have never known"), proving that in a genre often preoccupied with looking and sounding evil, it's music that is still capable of genuine soul.

8/10

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B / B+

side from controversy, the legacy of Varg Vikernes' Burzum is the one-man black metal band. The idiom is prone to solipsism, but in the right hands, it's a gateway. American practitioners Xasthur, Leviathan, and Krohm, to name a few, have pushed the format to psychedelic, highly personal extremes. Later Burzum moved away from black metal towards ambient experimentation; one-man bands worldwide now use black metal as a point of departure. Caina and Godheadscope are two of the most exciting artists today in this vein. The work of both could barely be called black metal, but Burzum runs in their blood.

Caina is Andrew Curtis-Brignell, who, at the tender age of 20, deserves the "genius" tag. While his peers parade about in panda paint, proclaiming misanthropy yet adding MySpace friends, Curtis-Brignell is unmasked, bespectacled, a dude with an acoustic guitar. Early demos aped Burzum's midpaced buzz, but even then, Caina had identity—haunting singing here, a coruscating clean tone there. Over time, Caina departed black metal for dark ambience, post-rock, neo-folk, and other un-metallic realms. The I, Mountain EP, released earlier this year, is a thrilling snapshot of this evolution, weaving myriad styles into a 20-minute journey.

Mourner refines Caina's sound(s); the ambience is more focused, the melodies more memorable. Curtis-Brignell is getting mighty proficient at audio editing. The album opens with a bulkheads-and-boilers soundscape worthy of The City of Lost Children. The scene then cuts to droplets of old piano fit for a Kie..lowski film. Not until the second track does a proper song swim into view. Acoustic strummings and Jeff Buckley-esque croons yield to oceanic waves of shoegazing distortion, as Curtis-Brignell's black metal past resurfaces and howls. The album is rife with this type of transformation. One second, you're in quiet forests; the next, you're drowning.

Profound Lore (who is rapidly becoming the vanguard of avant-garde metal) put out Mourner</I>, but so could have 4AD in its prime. "Constantine the Blind" and "Morgawr" are gothic folk with electric interruptions; "The Sleep of Reason" recalls the delirious shoegazing of the Verve's A Storm in Heaven. A hidden track even drops bouncy post-punk, albeit with windswept desert tones.

God Is Myth, which released I, Mountain as well as Caina's Some People Fall full-length, has another empire-builder in A City Out of Sight. Godheadscope is Matt Rosin, who has collaborated with Polish black metal outfits Dead Raven Choir and Wolfmangler. In Godheadscope, Rosin leaves black metal behind almost entirely. He runs modern classical composition through ambient drone and noise; the title of the second track, "Joy/Grime," could be a manifesto. "Room of Light" is a marvel of minimalism. Sustained foghorn tones (think timestretched digital brass) sound at regular intervals, with weighty space in between. Over ten minutes, the tones build and recede like the Ujjayi breath of yoga.

"Joy/Grime" drops delicate piano into fields of electrical interference. The buzzing grows, overtaking the piano, while ghostly vocals waft in the background. Left hand joins right hand in counterpoint, as acoustic guitar strums beats. The track rolls like a slow night train; after church bells sound, the track disappears into the horizon. "Dusk on Glass," too, takes its time. It unfolds symphonically, silicon cellos grandly sustaining below shimmering high end. The only blot is "The Weight of Paper," with its unfocused dissonance and messy mix. But, like Curtis-Brignell, Rosin is still peaking. His MySpace has a new track, "Medusa in the Cistern," forthcoming on a split with Italian dark acoustic act Stroszek; it's the best thing Michael Nyman never wrote.
Cosmo Lee