It's fairly intimidating to tackle any release from the Azerbaijani, solo-black metal artist 40°22'37.7"N 49°50'51.6"E, also known as Emin Guliyev, but better recognized as Violet Cold. Emin is extremely prolific, often releasing several full-length albums in a single year (the most infamous streak of which was the ambient sound trilogy Sommermorgen released over the course of 2018). Emin is also well known for stepping outside of the confining shadows of raw black metal to embody within his sound aspects derived from shoegaze, post-rock, house music, and various strata of both Western and Middle-Eastern folk. All of which appear to find astonishing dimensions of accommodation on his latest LP, Empire of Love.
Emin has been reliable for his captivating and divergent explorations of black metal for as long as I've been aware of his work. In addition to his probing into the ambient textures of undefined spaces of potential on Sommermorgen, he also took listeners to the stars on the interstellar frontier, breaching opus kOsmik the following year. Black metal can be a primitive and traditionalist genre, one that often seems most comfortable in the grime and decay of underbrush, or the staining soot of a long-dead campfire. But Emin was still able to take its crude tools and terrestrially oriented gaze and use them to write for us a map of celestial bodies. Empire of Love, as you should gather from the title and cover, is no less ambitious and bold in its approach.
Adapting the symbolic representation of his homeland (the Azeri flag), and modifying its color scheme to match that of the contemporary LGBTQ+ movement, Empire of Love performs an insurrectionist move against the presently repressive and homophobic government of Azerbaijan. A coup deepened in its audacity by the combination of native Azerbaijani folk with incredibly clean and crisp atmospheric black metal in a celebration of difference and defiance. It's a fairly overt subversion, demonstrating the way in which individuals are often made the enemies of a society by virtue of their mere existence, and ways in which the act of continuing to exist in such scenarios can consequentially form the basis for rebellion.
This is made most clear on the effervescent and rosé hued "Pride," which entwines cleanly sung, woman's vocals intoning a rollicking folk melody with mathy tremolos and refreshing gusty synth chords to form a nebula of affirmation that will shock your synapsis with a near overdose of pure serotonin. This particular mix of sounds and elements finds fresh and generative recombinations on later tracks like the reflective and cascading "Shegnificant," with its climbing post-hardcore guitar progressions, as well as the cooly elegant and explosively mercurial saga "Be Like Magic," which earns the merit of its pretense through the feat of hybridizing orchestral black metal and arena rock while still leaving room for a cyclopean-voiced rap verse in its bridge. While it's impressive to hear the guitar tones and '80s, Cult styled, goth 'n roll of this track taken to novel heights on the darkly romantic "We Met During The Revolution," I'm not as struck by this particular chimera as much as I am by the rapid exchange of tremolos that can be found on the militantly upbeat "Working Class" or the simple and cheery blush of opener "Cradle." Both of which feature performances on a traditional tar accompanied by electric guitar.
The fact that the varied vocal performances here appear to only be possible with the aid of an AI does little to diminish the effectiveness of the arrangements on Empire of Love. Similarly, its overriding themes of solidarity, optimism and pride in affection do nothing to degrade its character as a black metal album. Black metal is rightly characterized by a rejection of modernity and all its shallow falsehoods. Empire of Love solidifies its place within this oppositional front by rejecting the prerogatives of the conservative, nationalistic and anti-queer agenda of the Azerbaijani government and presents in its stead an inclusive, national identity that cannot be confined by the limits of contemporary culture's imagination. In short, when reality fails to match the potential of Emin's imagination, Emin allows his imagination to become the catalyst of a new reality- submerging the hostility of a degraded world in the radiant prism of a rainbow and allowing it to be born anew.
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