It
begins with an organ – the most dissonant, horrifying organ freakout conceivable. For
twenty long seconds this organ rings out through the speakers. It is then abruptly
replaced by a skittering lone guitar. Its chromatic riff plays out like a
spider in a bath tub. The drums and bass haven’t even entered the mix yet but
they will, any second now. You, the listener, are shitting yourself in fearful
apprehension. Well, maybe not you
personally but I, for one, shat myself whilst listening to this album. Multiple
times.
 |
| Just look at these fuckers. Pure evil |
Sacred White Noise is the debut full-length album by Canadian black metallers,
Thantifaxath. The identity of the band members is unknown. They wear hooded robes and
stuff when they perform live to conceal their true appearance. Personally I don’t
think they’re human beings at all. I think they’ve journeyed here from a
distant volcanic world devoid of sunlight. They’re here to show us what real
fear is.
Fear and
beauty. As frighteningly dissonant as many of the melodies are, they’re also
deeply-moving in how sweetly melancholy they are. The band also know when to
strip things back, to slow things down, whilst still keeping a captivating
level of tension. “Eternally Falling” creates a vast empty landscape mid-way
through the album, lacking almost entirely in percussion, making room for a
sad, eerie chord progression. This track is followed by “Panic Becomes Despair”
in which the music then plummets back into atonal, tremolo-picked chaos.
For a
black metal record, the production is fairly clean. You can really hear and
appreciate the interplay between the bass and guitar as they spiral madly amongst one
another. Brutal, mid-range screams make up the vocals, the snarl on the end of
each utterance similar to Obituary’s John Tardy. It’s cool to hear a black
metal record in which some of the lyrics can actually be interpreted. The
screams of “WHERE ARE YOU???!!!” during the final track make for a particularly unsettling listen.
With its
ever-changing contrasts between loud and soft, fast and slow, beautiful and
ugly, Sacred White Noise remains
constantly engaging whilst never feeling disorganised or poorly structured. It’s
a perfectly engineered, artfully atmospheric thrill ride and one of the most
enjoyable black metal records I’ve heard in a long time.
★★★★★