VALKYNAZ — Zwietracht (review)

VALKYNAZ — Zwietracht album cover Album · 2016 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
siLLy puPPy
VALKYNAZ is yet another black metal band inspired by video games this time from S. Stormhammer’s “The Elder Scrolls.” Formed in 2009 in Henderson, NV this lo-fi raw black metal band has been hiding in the Nevada desert ever since and has cranked out several demos, many splits, EPs and eight full-length albums. This one ZWIETRACHT is the seventh and my random introduction to this noisy band’s hostile black metal kvlt sound that laments the usual topics such as darkness, hatred, isolation, depression and of course the Elder Scrolls!

This is fairly short album at around 32 minutes and features 12 somewhat short tracks more like a punk band but this band which is really the two members of S. Stormhammer (all instruments, vocals) and Kei (vocals) can really make a lot of noise with this lo-fi unorthodox brand of bizarre black metal / blackgaze / avant-garde madness. Nothing is really standard about this one at least in terms of the instruments working together. While the album starts off fairly tame, it quickly ramps up so that the guitars, bass and drums are operating in their own separate worlds but somehow keep a rhythmic drive in unison.

The vocals are buried in the mix and scream to emerge from the din. There are short atmospheric intros that build dark ambient dread before the cacophonous roar of the heavy distortion and somewhat tinny sounding production acts like a million fingernails carving their way into a chalkboard. While the vocals are frantic, the five instrumentals are more steeped in psychedelic rock with tripped out fuzzy haze gurgling like a blackened swarm of buzzing noise. The album gets weirder and weirder as it goes along with strange counterpoints and off-kilter percussive beats.

The track “Wir Malten Den Sternen” almost sounds like a post-rock in opposition type of track with thundering guitar sounds and screaming insane asylum vocals which finds several instruments totally off in their own world effectively creating four unrelated parts but the basis is the mellow mid-tempo atmospheric keyboard parts. This is beyond strange and will only appeal to those who seek out the craziest of weirdness. It’s rather addicting if you relish avant-garde eccentricities. Since i’ve experienced no other album from this artist to compare, i can only conclude that this bizarre act will remain defiantly in the underground as this is some of the most difficult black metal listening you can imagine.
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