Album Review : Ether - Hymns of Failure (2015)
The first time I heard Quebec-based one man DSBM project Ether’s first album Depraved, Repressed, Feelings around 2008, I was afraid my mind was being poisoned. While most depressive suicidal black metal emphasizes feelings of melancholia and forlornness, Ether blasted an all-out sonic assault of emotional turmoil on its listener. It felt different. It felt dangerous. Never in a million years, I thought that I’d see another album of a project of such extreme despair, yet here we are.
Ether released another record called Hymns of Failure in 2015 and it's as fucking terrifying as its predecessor.
What makes Hymns of Failure such a standout listening experience in DSBM is that it consists in six songs of grueling length. From nine to eighteen minutes each. The opener Failure starts without any preamble and slaps you in the face with pummelling riffs and unrelenting blast beats. The tonality of these riffs is really what makes Failure such a powerful song. I am completely tone deaf, so I don't know whether it's on key or not, but it sound wrong. Broken. Guitars are not supposed to sound like this.
The authenticity of Scythrawl's vocals are another important component of Ether's atypical sound. They don't sound like something technically rehearsed at all. Interplay between his shrieks and the tortured riffing makes Failure sound like a man surrendering to his demons. It hits nasty, unspoken emotions.
The follow-up Enmity will make you question whether or not Hymns of Failure is DSBM at all. Because it is very much a beast that mutates as you listen to it. This is very much a blast beat laden hybrid of DSBM, post-metal and dark ambient where guitars take more of an atmospheric role and Scythrawl incorporates spoken word segments in order to create a whole other, more empowering dynamic. While Failure was about suffering emotionally, Enmity is very much about transforming and moving on.
Coldness is one of the most disjointed, experimental tracks on Hymns of Failure. Built upon a swirling riff reminiscent of more conventional, shoegaze-inspired DSBM, it features a spellbinding vocal performance by Schythrawl, who alternates between shrieks, spoken word and operatic vocals while pondering the real value of love in someone’s life. The song is built to serve a philosophocal purpose and not the opposite, which makes Coldness as byzantine and unpredictable and as it gets.
That’s the thing with Hymns of Failure and Ether's music in general. You're not in control. You're trapped inside someone else's mind and this person isn't totally in control either.
The longest song on the record Emptiness circles back to the haunting guitar tone of Failure. Seriously guys, it’s such a haunting sound. It's like if a dentist drill was melodic. It has prospective pain and beauty in the same notes. The riffing work tells a story in itself on this song. It ranges from inspiring to nightmarish along the stream of consciousness narration about hitting rock bottom and forsaking your own life. There's a piano interlude as some point that gets taken over by a guitar riff. It's beautiful and tragic.
It's a great song about an idea very dear to my heart. You need to kill your old self to be reborn.
Hypersensitivity is on the shorter side of Hymns of Failure at twelve minutes. It's one of the most personal songs on the record. It starts with what is almost a rock riff and features some clean singing, which I appreciated the sheer balls it must've taken to do, given the difficult and intimate subject matter. Once again, the song serves as the backdrop for the purpose of what Scythrawl is trying to say and echoes how he feels as he’s experiencing what he's talking about. It's the most vulnerable and relatable song on Hymns.
The closer Isolation is indicated to be twenty-three minutes long on Metal Archives, but the version available on Bandcamp is only fifteen. So it might be the longest song on the record. It's also, in my opinion, the most atypical and interesting. It’s a freakin’ tapestry of overlaying riffs that builds intensity as it goes along. It’s one of my favourite drumming performances too. It also has orchestral elements to it. A string section that means to shift the emotional focus of the song and usher a more intense segment.
…and let me tell you, it works beautifully.
I might repeat myself, but Scythrawl's vocal versatility and the authenticity of his performances are really the showstopper of Hymns of Failure. He is so adept at hopping from one style to another: clean, operatic, spoken word, shriek. They all alternate so seamlessly, you can feel him losing and regaining control over his life. The song also breaks and build back only to break again in a dark ambient outro, highlighting the futility of desires and longing. It's absolutely brilliant in its own odd, idiosyncratic way.
*
Ether is definitely not for everyone. It's not even for every DSBM fans as it is quite unconventional. Scythrawl doesn't subscribe to the aesthetics of the genre. He said in interview (and in his songs) that he primarily builds around melodies. That feelings come to him in the form of melodies and that he builds the songs around them, which seem to function as pure emotional catharsis for the poison that wells up inside him over time. That would explain the lengthy periods of time between records.
I found out there was another Ether record six weeks ago or so, when I discovered that Scythrawl now owns a microbrewery and generally seems in a better place than he was when he wrote Hymns of Failure. I don't wish him another Ether album, but I'm glad he shared this one with us. The level of intimacy and vulnerability he showed on it is unparalleled in my experience. That stuff builds relationships, you know? I don't know Scythrawl personally, but I would probably back him up in a fistfight.
