It can occasionally happen that you’ll hear a tune at the exact moment you’re supposed to hear it. Without expectations, without previous knowledge, without knowing you need to hear it. It just appears out of nowhere and sticks with you, without you knowing it… until you hear it again in a different setting or, might sound difficult to explain, in another tune. Not a cover, not a copy, just simply some other tune, may it be from a completely different artist or the same artist progressing in their way.
I first became familiar with Indian band Antakrit and Sri Lankan band Nefertem (surprisingly both) while going through my last personal crisis a couple of years back, when I was desperately trying to rebuild my life after a prolonged period of harassment and psychological abuse. After months of not being allowed to listen to music I was dying to hear something which would touch me. So I allowed a playlist I secretly composed while not being allowed to listen to music play and most of the stuff went by without me noticing it. My personal musical preferences usually don’t really include stuff with any melody, so I could blame it on that fact that I actually noticed something different is playing.
But this has nothing to do with leaning a bit more towards including melody. Allow me to explain. Since I have no clue about technicalities, composing music and recording it, I always divide music into the one you can listen to and the one you can feel. Music for hearing is something which can play and it won’t piss you off, even when you hear it several times in a short period of time. But the darker spectrum of music is not to merely be listened to, it’s meant to be felt, as it builds an atmosphere where you can lose yourself, which will eventually make you find yourself again.
From the Antakrits ‘Voidfinder’, an intro to an amazingly dark record which puts most of current top notch black metal bands to shame with its ritualistic chant which gives off a feeling it works both was (played forward and played backwards, like it’s common in black metal) and then fogging itself into the second song ‘Entropy’, a mid paced bulldozer destroying whatever you might be clinging onto in the most painful manner, as in ‘not fast’. Do the math yourself.
Nefertems side is slightly faster and ‘Execution of Seraphim’ is an amazing example of how strong the cooperation between the musicians in the band actually is. Amazing guitar work does not overshadow the drums and everything is seasoned with a thick layer of barely noticeable shrieking from the background, which actually gives off a severely unsettling feeling throughout this song and ‘Exodus VII’.
As said, it’s difficult to explain what you’re feeling while listening to a split you’re supposed to write a review for… In my case it’s fight fire with fire or even better put, fight darkness with darkness. Even though both bands have aurally progressed since that godforsaken day I first heard them, they don’t remind me of the darkness I was going through at that point of my life, they remind me of how important darkness actually is. While the light might be the fastest thing in existence, wherever it appears, the darkness is already waiting for it.
