#urgrund

[drondskaath]

Häxenzijrkell | Urgrund | 2022

German Black Metal

Artwork by Karmazid

https://haexenzijrkell.bandcamp.com/album/urgrund

[blackmetalstellar]

HÄXENZIJRKELL

[Urgrund, Black Metal, Germany, Amor Fati Productions, 2022]

- https://youtu.be/VUyPt3EIk5s

[pabloorza]

institucionalidade lítica Gz (2009)

[dustedmagazine]

Häxenzijrkell — Urgrund (Amor Fati)

The first 27 minutes of Urgrund, the new LP from German black metal band Häxenzijrkell, constitute a sustained sonic vortex. Mid-to-down-tempo riffs growl and shriek, mimicking the sounds of glaciers calving; the percussive thunder is precise, and while the strikes are spare, they reverberate with considerable force. The song’s melodic structures are simple, but they are indeed melodic, imbuing the maelstroms of “Die Entschleierung” and “Von Zeit und Form” with magnetic power. The songs draw you in and suck you down, into dark, deliberately swirling depths. As the title of “Die Entschleierung” indicates, it feels as though something is being revealed, a cryptic message that cuts through the inky pitch of those deeps. The experience is heavy, musically and in relation to a dominant sense of ponderous profundity. In a word: Yikes.

So, some other words: Urgrund, Entschleierung, Zeit, all philosophically thick, and the German makes things sound sort of Heideggerian. One envisions lots of misty, Alpine mountainsides; spiritually impenetrable thickets; long, arcane discoursing on concepts like “dwelling” and “Dasein.” All that’s needed is a night sky, a line of skiers bearing torches and Leni Riefenstahl, ruddy cheeks aglow, leading the way. Those are loaded names, signaling varying degrees of collaboration with the Third Reich’s cultural wing — and likely sensationalist, low-hanging fruit to pluck in context of black metal. This reviewer has no clue what positions the duo (identified only as P and MK, in cultish black metal style) in Häxenzijrkell take in the ongoing NSBM/RABM schisms, if any position at all. Lots of bands have declared themselves Artists (my capital A, ironizing intended) ensconced in lofty spaces above the petty fray of the political. Sorry, folks: if it’s social, and especially if money is changing hands, it’s political.  

What about the music? It’s quite good, if a little less than stylistically dynamic. The record’s third and final track, “Der Pfad der Finsternis” (for us Anglos: “The Path of Darkness”), picks up the pace to a steadily forced march, which soon breaks into a trot. Whichever of the duo, MK or P, is assigned vocal duties does a lot of groaning and yelling. The guitars intensify all the sustained menace. Perhaps the best thing about Häxenzijrkell is the tone that MK generates, which is steely and molten to equal extents. Not “molten steel”; it doesn’t flow so much as it crunches. The guitars on Urgrund sound like steel being torn asunder amid volatile volcanic activity. It’s a compelling sound that this reviewer will happily dwell with for long swaths of that slowly passing Zeit — so long as Frau Riefenstahl stays out of the frame. 

Jonathan Shaw

[casualdeaths]

#urgrund

[nubecita]

er hat den abgrund gesehen, den grund aller dinge. er hat die tiefe darin gesehen, den urgrund der erde und den umkreis der länder auf ihr. ans ende der welt ist er gegangen und weiter und sah das meer das uns umschließt. er hat verbotenes gesehen und verborgenes und die geschichte der zeit vor der flut wurde ihm offenbart. und als er dann abgeschlagen und müde von weit her zurückkehrte meißelte er seine ganze mühsal in einen stein.

gilgamesh, I, erste verse.