VONN — Victim One: Ecstasy (review)

Album · 2010 · Doom Metal

3.5/5 · 2012-04-01
renkls

Similar to its predecessor in being a single track rendition of drumless doom. This time however, it's not focused on agony but ecstasy. It's also mercifully shorter then Victim One: Agony in being 52 minutes instead of 76. I will address a few little points of interest/niggles I have with this work. There are parts which sound like we're overhearing an orgy in some seedy downtown brothel, underneath the fog of a slow grating guitar rhythm. There hasn't been too much sound change between this and 'Agony' either. Maybe, just taking a stab at things, but this release deals less with the 'pleasure' associated with ecstasy, and more with juxtaposing the sensations of the pinnacle heights of pleasure with the darkest, cruelest aspects of pain. Sometimes in the music it sounds like both sensations at once, which I don't believe is an accident. Consequently, as I listened, I was reminded (like with 'Agony') of Naked City's Leng Tch'e. The cover art of that release, graphic though it was,was said to have been of a devastating impact on Georges Bataille, who included said photograph in Tears of Eros. He is quoted as thus:

"This photograph had a decisive role in my life. I have never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain, at once ecstatic and intolerable. I wonder what the Marquis de Sade would have thought of this image, Sade who dreamed of torture, (which was inaccessible to him) but who never witnessed an actual torture session. In one way or another this image was incessantly before his eyes. But Sade would have wanted to see it in solitude, at least in relative solitude, without which the ecstatic and voluptuous effect is inconceivable. What I suddenly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish — but which at the same time delivered me from it — was the identity of these perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror. And this is my inevitable conclusion to a history of eroticism." — Georges Bataille.

Here, I feel this same concept is being driven home, albeit in a more sexually, physically draining fashion. I hadn't believed this was possible, whilst Leng Tch'e was based in agonies that are almost unimaginable, here the aspects of pleasure are addressed as being not as far from pain as we may hope for. In this way, I feel it is a fittingly difficult album, and one that I initally misunderstood. But by Vonn's motto of 'Doom through torture through doom', I understand now that they are presenting an intensely difficult listening experience as well as many allusions which bring up more unsettling questions. Listening through it again, I think that I understand the founding 'act' that this piece of music is based in, being that of either sexual abuse or rape. I may be incorrect in this assumption, but by the subtraction of 'human' musicality only to be filled entirely, by merciless near atonal guitar, I get the impression that Vonn is juxtaposing a physical act of 'amoral'/'inhuman' torture with a physical act of pleasure. But I cannot be certain, and this is treading dangerous moral grounds that make this album incredibly niche. Not only because it is a very limited self released effort - but the concept that underpins the entire 52 minute piece is very grim and menacing. Like with Agony, it does get deadening and repetitive, as time progresses and we stew longer in this mixture of torturous ecstasy, but I think for a once off experience of Vonn, this is likely a bit more accessible then their debut - though requires patience and an active mind. There is a lot at play that can be pondered, probably enough to easily last the albums length.

It is uncompromising (with the exception of the last five minutes which is the calmest Vonn have ever been; the aftermath perhaps?) and hopelessly dark. I would venture that it is less nihilistic then its predecessor in that it seems to have a much clearer motive - yet we are still drawn into a puerile cycle of guitar torrents where every chord seems drenched in suffering conditioned against the respective ecstasy of the vocalist/s. I may be exaggerating, but in the right environment, this album can be both confronting and highly valuable pondering material. That environment is most certainly not in your parents presence, I will tell you now.