Spring Colors Challenge - Day 1: Black*
There has been for some time an inexplicable notion that I've carried with me about one-man, black metal maestro Këkht Aräkh's second LP, Pale Swordsman. That dim hunch grinding between the gear-teeth in my thought-pit is that, despite all signs to the contrary, this is a sping-time album. Of course, when I looked it up, low-and-behold, the album dropped in April of 2021. There are times when even the daftest of my intuitions prove correct. This, apparently, is one of those times. But the serendipity of a release date is all about spreadsheets, logistics, and record-label blarney- what about the substance? How spring-like are Pale Swordsman's words, sounds, and stride? Well, if we're being honest, very spring-like- if statistics on depressive ideation are an acceptable reference point. As you may well know, spring is a dark time for a lot of people. The decreased sunlight and forced isolation of the colder months of the year can wreak havoc on people's minds and emotions. Following winter's chill with a damp and unpredictable period that usually combines heavy rain, hail, and sporadic heat waves certainly does not do any favors for the nerves of folks who are readily affected by such things. In the depths of the seclusion and erratic nature of the environment, some very dark thoughts can creep in. It's in this low sling where one might find the entrance to Këkht Aräkh's keep. His second LP, Pale Swordsman, draws heavily from early US side DSBM, with its dry, heaving cries, the clattering serrated anguish of its grooves, and the cold distant pull of its tremolos, all gestures of despondence evoking the struggle of someone attempting to beat back the demons that have incubated in a broth of alienation, deep in inside his bowls, and are now clawing their way up and out the man's throat. Pale Swordsman is fairly typical, if slightly more compelling, than most singularly composed, second-wave indebted black metal albums, but what will likely catch your attention immediately, and stick with you long after your initial listen, is not the blitz but the balladry which Këkht Aräkh etches around and between the expected storms of frost barbarian razzia. Piano interludes drift in like rumors from a far-off land, and are received as genuinely brief, brittle and beautiful, performed with a pained delicacy and weariness as if there was a marked fear that the keys may turn to dust beneath the player's dancing fingers- a combination of frailty and resigned realism that recounts a lust for things lost- an ache like an old scar which continues to tease and burn like embers of a funeral pyre below bruised the skin. The album's woeful cultivation of romanticism is allowed to effectively bloom and fully part with inhibition on the closing track rawly opulent and emotive "Swordsman," which may be the best, and only, existent example of Midgard emo to surface in the modern age. Worrier he may be, Këkht Aräkh is not one to fear wearing his heart over his chainmail.
I see your future in a scattering of Sacred Bones.
