The Northern Cold

Strapping Young Lad’s third album is their weakest, and does sort of stick out among the rest of the band’s catalog as being kind of weirdly shallow. It’s not that the band does anything substantially different from what they ordinarily do on this LP, but what is done just sounds stale, like they were really back burner ideas that they threw together for the release. There are worse examples of this sort of thing in metal, but this release really doesn’t stack up at all against the rest of Strapping Young Lad’s catalog.

‘SYL’ somehow manages to have massive amounts of variation at the same time that it has no variation at all. Each track, in and of itself, possesses little to no variation. There are two or three main musical ideas in each track that just alternate over and over again until some predefined length is reached; it’s a lot like rock music in that way. That in and of itself isn’t so bad; Darkthrone made one of the best metal albums ever in that way with ‘Transilvanian Hunger’. But additionally, those parts aren’t very GOOD. They’re just a series of constant double bass and simple tremolo riffing or bombastically held chords, with Townsend’s wailing vocals, but unlike other albums, where those sections are well-written and gripping, it seems that the objective with the writing here was ‘we have to make a bunch of Strapping Young Lad riffs’ instead of ‘we have to make a bunch of great riffs’ which just happen to be in the Strapping Young Lad mold.

At the same time, there’s massive variation from one track to another; too much, in fact. The tracks are all in the same general style, but they have no connection to each other; the album doesn’t tell a greater story, nor do the tracks individually, really. The best tracks are the ones like ‘Relentless’, and even then the best it can do is be merely catchy and have good melodies. Other than that, everything’s just so… insignificant. Material on other albums like ‘City’ was really emotionally engrossing, and felt like a look into the mind of Townsend. The stuff here is just a collection of songs.

Your whole enjoyment of this album really hinges on the reasons why you enjoyed other Strapping Young Lad albums. If you like it simply due to its musical aesthetic, then yes, there’s really nothing wrong with this (though I might argue that some of the songs are poorly written). The production is good and clear, and there’s catchy riffs and vocal patterns sometimes. If you liked other albums because of how they worked AS ALBUMS, with each song being an important part of a whole experience, I really feel that you’ll be disappointed by this. Even if you view it from the perspective of songwriting, this is the weakest link in Strapping Young Lad’s catalog, and the inability of it to communicate a greater meaning just brings it down further. I don’t particularly like it.

Somehow, I’m not entirely sure why, no review I’ve read on ‘Winds Saturate With Inhumane Longing’ has mentioned the cover art. Maybe the commentary is just so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. It’s a pretty accurate depiction of the music: crude, bizarre, and painstakingly detailed. This album doesn’t lack at all as far as variation is concerned; it’s easily one of the weirdest and most complex albums I’ve ever heard. That being said, I don’t derive a huge amount of enjoyment from listening to it.

‘Winds Saturate With Inhumane Longing’ is the sort of album that I like having in my collection and appreciate in an abstract, artistic sense, but rarely gets an actual spin in the player from me. It’s ridiculously unforgiving to the audience, because there’s really nothing ‘normal’ or ’standard’ about this release. There aren’t any catchy riffs, any very memorable parts, or any real logical song structures. In fact, this seems to be an LP written with the specific goal of the listener being confused by it, as it refuses to make even the slightest concession to logic. On this album, you’ll hear black metal, of course, but also folk, doom, thrash, and even oldschool NWOBHM at times. For those who fetishize variation (and you know who you are), you should get this album immediately, because it will be right up your alley. For the rest of us, though, it’s a more difficult decision indeed.

The album opens in an entirely nonsensical way, with ‘Demons Haunt This Forest’ spiraling out of control throughout its sub-three minute running time. Rickety blasting abounds with seemingly pitch shifted vocals and crazy Kerry King style solos flittering in and out just as quickly. There’s no real structure: the riffing seems random, and it’s all pretty atonal and really, really chaotic. Fortunately, this is the most entropic the band gets on the album, but it’s still a rather unfriendly way to open it. The title track that follows is a much more measured beast, with clicky bass following along with the recurring guitar theme, the melody of which is used as a counterpoint to the double-tracked vocals that fill the song. It doesn’t resemble any black metal that I’ve heard, though it’s clearly part of the genre; that seems to be the name of Misantropical Painforest’s game throughout. When ‘Past The Stonecircle Clearing’ fires up, you’ll notice yet another weird idiosyncrasy about this album: the production NEVER stays the same. One track has reedy, thin production, while another is much cleaner and more clearly studio-produced, while others are pure rehearsal room quality. It makes no sense at all, and it fits the music, really.

So the album continues with just such variation; ‘Past The Stonecircle Clearing’ is mostly midpaced black metal with strange clean vocals and a rather convoluted sort of development occurring in the drums and guitars throughout the lengthy track. There’s only two tracks on this album that I really ‘enjoy’ listening to in the normal way: ‘To Bequeath The Tranquil Waters’, which has very organized, memorable, and melodic riffing, and a certain nocturnal, maritime atmosphere that I find very enjoyable, and the frequently-lauded ‘Journeying (T)here’, an experiment in only guitar and vocals, with the former going through a series of melodic black/thrash riffs while the latter growls along, and occasionally features warbling, Diamanda Galas-style vocals from out of nowhere. Despite how weird these songs are (just as weird as anything else that Misantropical Painforest does), they’re able to channel their esoteric weirdness into something haunting and beautiful.

I have no idea what to make of the rest of the album. Much of the music seems like an extended Finnish jam-out, with a lot of what seems like randomness for the sake of randomness and alienating the audience. I’m all for audience alienation: it’s a powerful tool which, when used correctly, can force the listeners to view the art in a completely different way. This certainly distances the audience, but I’m not sure how much it makes them want to explore it with their newfound view of the music, particularly when they can’t get very close to the thoughts and feelings described in the first place. From an artistic perspective, I understand and respect ‘Winds Saturate With Inhumane Longing’ greatly; it’s music created by one man (plus session drummer Dirtmaster) and is specifically and totally based on that man’s thoughts and experiences alone, with no need to dumb down the ideas for anyone else. As a listener, I find it unappealing in a lot of ways, although it’s clearly meant to be.

But, like in many cases, the artist in me wins out, and I find the almost punishing nature of the songs on this album pretty cool most of the time. It’s like ‘Winds Saturate With Inhumane Longing’ is daring you to try to understand it, to unravel the layers of metaphor that shroud the lyrics and to dissect the abstract music that rebuffs any and all attempts to understand it in an objective fashion. It is music for itself, not for an audience, and an attitude that uncompromising earns my respect regardless of how ‘fun’ the music is. This is obviously not something that will appeal to many people, but that was never its intent in the first place. It is music to express feelings, images, and concepts in a completely abstract fashion, without any fear of being misunderstood. In fact, Misantropical Painforest revels in that lack of understanding and celebrates it as something majestic. For that reason alone it bears further investigation.

While the influences were certainly present on the previous full-length, ‘Stigma Egoism’ is definitely the Lucifugum album which most resembles Dub Buk’s ‘Rus Ponad Vse!’ in style. Stripping out much of the melody of ‘…And The Wheel Keeps Crunching…’, Lucifugum crafts an album of incisive, militaristic black metal with significant thrash elements and a sense of melody derived from a combination of primitive black/thrash and Ukrainian folk. This is possibly Lucifugum’s most direct and savage album (at least at this point in the band’s career), and is certainly in the upper echelon of the artist’s releases.

The resemblance to Dub Buk’s work is pretty striking; a very similar set of rhythms and riffing styles are used. The music is aesthetically black metal but at points seems to have more in common with thrash than anything; tremolo riffing is rather underused in favor of more complex and rhythmic note structures. The melodies are right out of the ‘Rus Ponad Vse!’ book as well; the riffs are all over the fretboard and with a folky tone despite the distinctly metal style of performance. Unlike ‘Rus Ponad Vse!’, however, and fitting this era of Lucifugum’s career, keyboards remain almost entirely unused; there’s maybe two pivotal moments where a light dusting of synths emerges, but otherwise this is entirely composed of conventional black metal instruments. This is an extremely riff-based album, and the intrusion of keyboards as a melodic voice would likely just confuse the music anyway.

The very fast and rhythmic nature of this music makes it a very captivating listen; Lucifugum are completely unwilling to let the listener get bored on this release and prevent through complex and intricate riffing placed within varied song structures. Only a few reprieves on this release are found; ‘Дикого Зверя’, for example, is an oddity with its strange, cracked-vinyl orchestral intro, and the band has a tendency to experiment with other such weirdness from time to time, particularly as the album wears on, such as on the entirely percussion-based track ‘Пляска Жизни Стылым Виснет’. These hints of something stranger are just at the edge of the music and never really intrude on the whole of the compositions, making for a delightfully strange, hinting-at-otherworldly style of music where fantastical and weird elements are brought firmly into reality by the over-the-trenches black/thrash on display.

‘Stigma Egoism’ is a catchy and very engaging album which could easily find itself wanted in the collection of just about any black/thrash fan. It’s unique without being novelty-ridden and based soundly in quality songwriting and riffing; there’s really no reason not to give this one a try. Certainly one of the stronger releases in Lucifugum’s catalog and recommended as such to anyone interested.