Originally revealed to the public in 2008, a remastered edition of Poizon of god has been released in 2021 by Abyssvm under the auspices of The Black Flame (Northwind). The new edition now boasts of greater space for the keyboards to be heard, and a judicious (slight though not overbearing) bass boost. The overall sound of the recording remains mellow, an understatement that works to put off those seeking the mere thrill of tone, and instead reserves greater repeatability by both its physical ease on the ears and the perceived room between the instruments. The clarity with which the different elements of the composition can be appreciated is due not to panning and tweaking in the mix, but as a result of the softness of the instruments. If listened to with dedication, the nuances in the extremely sensitive arrangements are brought forth for the perspicacious to dwell in, dissolve into, and use as medium to go above and beyond themselves.
Poizon of god is the culmination of two decades in which the refinement of specific ideas were given space and time to grow organically: adequately and in terms of their own nature as perceived by the careful mind of Ebvleb. Thus, Abyssvm’s catalogue is composed mostly of widely differing versions of the same compositions recorded in live, semi-live direct takes, rehearsals and studio recordings. Releases are few and far between.
Two of the three main pieces found in Poizon of god can be heard in a 1995 live take titled The prophecy is my name, I’ll be here eternally. Additionally in this crude recording we find a less refined version of 2014’s Todo en tinieblas (All in darkness) under the title of ‘I am HE’. These were further shaped and improved upon in the 21st century by Ebvleb with the support of talented drummer Akherra Phasmatanas, whose intuitive sensibilities fit glove-in-hand the technical, aesthetic and ideological requirements of Abyssvm.
Neither the sound nor the style here are in any way “old school” in the popular sense of this term, yet neither does it follow temporary fashions. In terms of composition we see no emulation, the chronological origins of the project lying before 1994. While Abyssvm belongs to those bands who take up an interpretation of fully developed black metal disregarding the influence of either rock or death metal, no other band sounds quite like Abyssvm. Ebvleb’s particular approach defies encasement into a specific era, given its abandoning of any riff tropes, conventional vocal deliveries or other genre-defining cliches. Shortly, we will explore why and how this is so.
Our discussion of Abyssvm’s music as showcased in Poizon of god will be divided into the following sections:
I. The Road Less Travelled
II. Style in Context
III. Emptying the Cup
I. The Road Less Travelled
Most bands think of the pieces they put together as stepping stones to the next thing. Demos are eruptions of whatever is on the musicians unconscious at that point in time. The general view of the matter is that they and the project must always evolve by leaving behind a stream of half-baked compositions in hopes that at some point a style converges around what at some point become the tropes that define the specific style of the band. This produces the well-known phenomenon in underground metal where given almost any one band, an album in their discography can be pinpointed as defining their style or career from the creative point of view. The rest of their material can be seen as an evolution toward that point or progressively failing attempts to reproduce and develop the creative gold mine they hit with “that one album”.
Abyssvm’s ethos and consequent praxis has allowed them to rise above the careerist mentality that leads to this frenetic lust for results. The ethos is one based on a sensibility for the eternal, acknowledging how any connection to it lies necessarily outside time. The way this translates to praxis may appear so simplistic that it disconcerts the average mind who wants things done, the album completed, the release on their hands, so they can go on to consume more. It requires unbound patience and observation, an observation of the inner world, of the piece, and the cosmos. If there is any posture that reflects a portion of this praxis it would be the stripped down contemplation practice of Zen, except that instead of voidism and non-being, it is pure Being that is sought, by lying back and letting it come.
How this translates to reality is seen in how the originating “riffs” of a composition born before 1994, one such as ‘Illusion of Pan’, find their culmination through 2008’s Poizon of god and then finally (magnificently) in 2014 with Cum Foeda Sanie Ex Ore. Depending on the piece, it is a string of progressive alterations to pacing, note alterations, layers and even structure showcased through a few incredibly limited underground releases. These pieces are to be seen as living organisms in their own right. They grow as they come through the medium of the artist. The adeptness of the artist lies in how they tend to this growing vine, without defiling it with projections of the personality, and how well they actualize the moods, impulses and flows that traverse him in pure form. The process requires passive investment, active dissociation, a fully living-in the experience that allows it to be without running toward or away from the perceived object. It becomes a matter of not forcing the hand, but returning naturally to attentiveness, to observe the gate. In the end, the artist senses how and when a piece reaches its final, settled form (essentially, when the life form has ceased). This may take a few years, or it may take a few decades. It may be the case that some never reach maturity because their life span is longer than that of the artist.
An important addition is that Abyssvm’s approach relies heavily on observance and aloofness, learning to ignore and let go of all the non-essential, of avoiding the frivolous, the temporary, the impositions of a base personality, side-stepping the trap of idle curiosity that forms of the bulk of the material most projects present. By doing so, the trite and common place is also avoided. Each section, riff, pattern used toward the representation of the being brought forth is carefully but not obsessively weighed and evaluated. The artist becomes the center in conjunction with the dark cosmos, and not as ego and personality. In silence and darkness, a fire burns away the illusion of crapices and cravings. What remains is the presence of you, of I, of a single Being behind each perceiving agent, drops in an ocean of awareness that converges, reflected in the expanse of the Nightsky.
II. Style in Context
If one is to specifically pinpoint the music of Abyssvm, it must be described as a spacious form of black metal making use of layered keyboards, electric and acoustic guitars, and various kinds of vocal deliveries, viewing different instrumentation as channels for patterns rather than just giving them a differentiated function. And if the music is sparse, it is so as a consequence of the measured way in which each of the elements is used. The vocals are not prevalent, but rather appear here and there as rasps, whispers and the occasional lament. Keyboards act as natural cloud formations in a landscape where they remain in apparent stillness, but along which their shapes vary in reaction to conditions.
The finger-picked acoustic enhancements appear as reverberations of the electric guitars, apart from the interludes where they alone amount for the bulk of the world created. The electric guitars themselves are used almost as if they were but another synthesizer setting, as another voice in a choir, which is not to say that the aggression that strumming affords is not capitalized upon. Those observant enough will have by now understood that the instruments are hereby arranged as streams of voices rather than components in a rock n’ roll ensemble.
In the past, would-be critics or passing listeners have attempted but failed at describing Abyssvm’s style as “flowing black metal”. One can comprehend the appelative in regards to the fact that rather than use death-metal-like riffs, Ebvleb restricts himself mostly to streams of power chords or single tremolo-picked notes. What is missed by the critics is the specific usage in each case, the effect achieved over the arrangements as a whole. The late-90s black metal style generally described as “flowing” places the whole weight of the music over a repeating power chord pattern, and one usually describing rather uninspired melodies. The rest of the music closely hugs that central line, and its repetition rapidly pulverizes the bastions of our patience. Not so the music of Ebvleb in Abyssvm.
While Abyssvm’s use of the guitar for fluxes instead of riffs melds it into the stream of other instruments, the most prevalent of which are the keyboard layers, the aim of the compositions is to create space and introduce variations from the central idea in dependent vector-ideas, such that from central patterns all keyboard lines and the guitar themselves ultimately diverge in details. This can be better visualized as a vortex of sound streams, not converging toward but emanating from an inaudible center. The electric guitar riff is taken to the purest usage and interpretation any instrument can be given not only in metal but in any music: as a stream or voice. It is this purity in composition which gives Abyssvm its sense of timelessness. The more they are so, the less subject they are to the tropes of rhythm and production (accounting for the tinkering of the instrument’s timbre) which define the overall tendencies in artistic eras.
Building upon this very important foundation (surprisingly unique within the realm of black metal, it must be said), Abyssvm builds expression vertically rather than horizontally. Each piece in Poizon of god has but a few different sections. While these are partly distinguished by a riff in the guitar, the idea is carried by a whole cluster of interacting patterns that describe an episode, extending a space. And when in a given section keyboard and guitar seem to converge, texture expansion is provided minimally by the use of a plucked acoustic guitar, a simple yet highly effective touch that plays wonderfully upon the ears. The significance of sections as episodes expanding spaces is reinforced by the use of intros, interludes and outros that are far more than the empty prelude or filler that they execute in most metal projects.
In the interest of clarity and historicity, it should be stated that the innovation of instruments as pure streams of pattern was something that nascent and fully developed black metal stumbled upon time and again. It is only with Abyssvm, however, that this point of view becomes a conscious method. The emphasis on fluxes of tone and note length in layers of vertical alignment as opposed to overt reliance on rhythmic emphasis through syncopation is something for which best music of all times has been known to those savvy enough to understand that transcendence is not in complication: music totally divorced from fashion, liberated from the shackles of time, seeming as old and new today as they did when they were first played in the era that welcomed them into the human fold. This, in effect, is the artistic (as well as spiritual) promise of black metal as the highest evolution of underground metal.
What all this implies as well, then, is that the way and setting in which to listen to Abyssvm differs from the norm, and so he who seeks these shores must adopt a different mindset — neither of the light nor of the dark, but of the twilight.
III. Emptying the Cup
Long accustomed to narrowing our vision to fit the simplicities of a dumbed down musical genre, fixating on the sole measure of “the riff”, “grit” or a vague atmosphere carried by a melody and a drum beat, it is no simple matter to switch over, to dial into, the experience of listening to music predicated upon a more expansive perception of pattern relations, centered not on piercing into and looking for narratives, but on passively receiving and being responsive to the inflow of movements, dilations and contractions.
It has been common practice for black metal bands of a certain type to prescribe their listeners a religious attitude, a physically darkened space. The method and attitude hinted at is quite powerful, even if customarily the value of the music espoused is void. For music that actually resonates and makes use of the space within a becalmed mind that sees darkness as a living thing into which they themselves extend, the technique pays great dividends.
The prospective listener of Poizon of god is advised to forgo listening to this work in moments of casual attention, in moments of transit when they are otherwise engaged. This is an album dedicated not to the “night”, but to the Cosmos, to Darkness, to the distant spaces of the Stars, and all in them which comprehends Being. These are neither symbols nor metaphors, but realities. Let the astute reader note the difference and the immensity of the implications. Set aside a time and place, during the night, spend some time in silence paying attention to your surroundings, and when you are ready to open a door and receive the influx, begin the journey Abyssvm can take you through. The direction is not just a straight line, but a series of moment to moment possibilities.
While purists demand that such things not be discussed out in the open lest they be defiled, the truth is that everything is Occult is a Secret not by its being kept literally hidden away by the few, but it is so esoterically. That is to say, it is only revealed by the experience itself, containing in itself the measure of worthiness of those that come to it and are able to grasp it. There is no need for a human guardian at the gates, and those that are able to drink from its cup have indeed emptied their own, lost the weight of attachment and distraction, and taken the leap.
The question remains whether everything hitherto discussed bears any import on the long term artform. Like most truly esoteric masterpieces, the answer is an elusive affirmative. Once this music leaves a record, those few that are able to tap into its current become irrevocably changed. Their view and sensibility now awakened to a different perspective, new dimensions now opened up even if they cannot explain what they are experiencing right away, their actions will follow in accordance to the deeper transformations of the mind.
D.A.R.G.
Nihilist Advance
