With summer almost over and the death cycle of the seasons in full rotation, I'm looking forward to having some more damp frigid weather to match my mood. Summer is fine and all but you really can't beat a moonless night when the ground is covered in a glass-like sheet of ice or walk in the woods when the wind whips through the trees like a chilled scythe, cutting through your jacket and reminding you how futile your attempts to guard your vulnerable flesh against the indifferent arc of nature's moods truly is. Winter is coming my friends and to prepare I've been listening to the third album from Manchester black metal band Burial. The album is titled Satanic Upheaval, and if ever there was a time that an album with this title should manifest it would be in this moment of absolute turmoil, when dark forces have conspired to stack bodies as a monument to social miscarriages and a withered invisible hand exerts its might to squeeze blood from labors in order to water the gardens of cannibal kings. An upheaval is needed at this time. And if it will not come from above, then it must well up from below. The howl of "Encircled By Wolves" is the sound of the world finally meeting a deserved end under a suffocating storm of hail and cold-burning hatred. "Hellish Reaping Screams" begins with a small deep gash that progressively yawns ever wider, exhaling the hot breath of hell, blanching your hair and eyebrows before disgorging a river of fire to roast the meat off your bones. "Barren Lands" passing like a benign shadow across the room before you, a spine-tingling encounter with a cold apparition who pities you more than you could ever bare to know. Burials Immortal-esque ice dance is bleak and penetrating, as it should be, but when the band wells up and unleashes a deadly obsidian deluge on tracks like "Beneath the Filth" or "Devour Your Soul" any safe harbors in your mind and spirit will be overwhelmed, and you will be given over to the Burials putrid excess, like a spider trapped in a rain gutter during a storm. As the wheel of Ka does turn, so shall you surrender your will to this upheaval.
Grab a copy of Satanic Upheaval from Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recording here.
