After The Storm

A couple of weeks ago there was a night in Wellington when it felt like the world was going to end. A storm swept across much of New Zealand, descending upon this little sea-port city with wild winds and almost-horizontal rain. At 6:30pm that Thursday night I stood at a bus stop while the wind whipped the thick rainwater back and forth across the surface of the road. It looked strangely beautiful under the streetlights. By the time I made it back to my apartment the footpaths and driveways were a ruin of torn foliage, scattered ferns, and chunks of wet-blackened wood. Lines were brought down at various points across the city; leaving people without power in the darkness and cold. Some for days afterwards - and winter in New Zealand can be harsh indeed. Roofs were torn off, windows shattered inwards.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of the wind beating itself against my walls and windows. Where I live, we weren't hit so bad but the next day I saw footage of coastal neighbourhoods - places where the road had been simply ripped into chunks of scattered cement.

And in the wet, in the darkness; things from the very dawn of time were drawn upwards and into the drains - strange chittering creatures with multitudinous legs.
Oh, you think I'm kidding about that last part?
Let me introduce you to the velvet worm - onchophora.

 

 

Cute little critter, huh. Sort of looks like the lovechild of a caterpillar and a centipede. What my friend found in her sink didn't look too much like that any more. What she found was grey and slimy, long-dead and waterlogged. Those endearing wee legs had rotted down to barbs.

It's a living fossil - one of those rare creatures for whom evolution is just something that happens to other people. Millions of years unchanged. Someone she knows had also found one recently, to their delight - also flushed upwards by the storm. I like to picture a vast, teeming mass of them living below the surface of the earth - down in the dirt and darkness...waiting for the chance to reclaim the world they lost.

And now, the segue...

Atrocity feat. Yasmin: 'After the Storm' (Napalm Records, 2010).

Atrocity are a German metal band with a thrashy, melo-death sound thick with progressive and symphonic influences. They also often betray a keen love of 80's pop songs. I'm not a huge fan.
With the addition of the angelically-voiced Liv Kristine Espenaes-Krull (to whom Atrocity vocalist Alexander Krull is married) they become Leaves' Eyes (a German-Norwegian symphonic metal band with a strong folk influence; they are definitely one of my favourites).

But Atrocity feat. Yasmin is another entity again - the addition this time being vocalist and flautist Yasmin Krull (Alexander Krull's sister). As different as Leaves' Eyes sound to Atrocity; this other project sounds even further removed from their parent band - to the extent that coming up with another whole new name might have been better advised.
That is to say - a lot of Atrocity's hardline fans really hate this other venture.

Their music has been described as ethno-metal, fans of Canadian harpist and Celtic/Middle-Eastern folk artist Loreena McKennitt are advised to check them out - though to my ears the single strongest influence on their sound is Australian darkwave/world/ethno-fusion duo Dead Can Dance.
If you really want to hear Loreena Mckennitt-gone-doom-metal check out US band Todesbonden's album 'Sleep Now, Quiet Forest' - it's utterly lovely, but y'know - heavy too.

Atrocity feat. Yasmin have two albums under their belt now, released quite some distance apart. Their debut is 'Calling the Rain'. I listened to it when Wellington was seized by drought; the grass and bush scorched to straw beneath endless blue skies. "After the Storm' is a logical continuation of their sound on that one.

At their core their music is based around the voices of the siblings. Yasmin has a rich, mid-range voice - thick and earthy with a wonderful keening/wailing quality reminiscent of the folk-singing in the more Eastern parts of Europe. At times she does recall a slightly raw-edged Lisa Gerrard. Alex steers largely clear of the extreme vocal style he favours for Atrocity - which is to his benefit as he has always struck me as an adequate rather than remarkable extreme vocalist - his growls and rasps have always sounded a little thin to my ears; lacking the basso, almost operatic cadence of Morten Veland (in his early works with Tristania); or the anguished intensity of Mr Curse (or Victorian black metal collective: A Forest of Stars). Here he utilizes a rough-tinged but largely melodic baritone style. I'm fairly certain he is working the Brendan Perry vibe in this, but his voice lacks the full-bodied richness of Perry - sounding slightly colder and coarser; it strongly recalls the 80's Gothic-baritone sound and occasionally evokes early-to-mid Nick Cave.
Either way it gives the ethno-metal concoction a definite post-punk vibe and must serve him very well in Atrocity's occasional 80's pop song covers.

Instrumentally the band fuses elements of Gothic metal with Eastern European and Celtic folk music, their sound is rich and well-traveled, but there is a looseness and roughness to their playing - this is not an overly-polished album. It is grandly atmospheric.

Rather than broadening their instrumental palette (via guest instrumentalists) to include a host of exotic and worldly instruments Atrocity feat. Yasmin have simply broadened the range of percussion instruments (adding hand drums, tribal percussion and shakers) and the rest falls to guitarist/bassist Thorsten Bauer. On the basis of this disc I'd say they've got themselves a real find in Bauer. The man is a genius. Throughout the album he utilizes delicate Classical-style guitar tapestries as well as a range of playing techniques and effects to make his instrument sound like a harp or a dulcimer. Heavier, more overtly-metallic playing is also in evidence. Keyboards are either wholly absent or so subtly utilized that they escaped my notice - though a few of the tracks add cello and violin to the mix.

Throughout the disc we are treated to Eastern-styled guitar strumming (that slightly recalls Canadian band The Tea Party) - 'As the Sun Kissed the Sky'; exquisite flute trills (most noticeable on the hooky 'Call of Yesteryear'); a Classical, Spanish-flavoured instrumental 'Flight of Abba Ibn Firnas'; heavier numbers (the ornate, heavy and musically complex 'Black Mountain' sees the return of Alex's guttural vocals); and even a slight 60's psych-folk vibe on 'Goddess of Fortune and Sorrow' - which finds Yasmin utilizing a softer, breathier approach to her typically dramatic, strident delivery.

Fans of fist-pumping, bone-cracking metal will likely go home hungry and that is the bit that makes this album kind of a hard sell. For myself, it's a fine and challenging disc and I would be delighted if Alex Krull and his conspirators continued with experiments in this vein.