Every now and again you want to hear something a little different and so every so often I’ve dipped into this latest release from Austrian composer Albin Julius for whom Der Blutharsch is now his primary project.
Opening with a ten minute plus slow building dirge ‘Shine’ that sees a vocal injected at just two points after 4 and 9 it’s hard listening to just the opening track to get a take on the music of Der Blutarsch; I mean sure it’s Gothic in outlook but deep and dark and layered and electronic too and it all finally unwinds at about 12 minutes.It’sa difficult first track to a new listener, though I imagine to the converted and glancing at the project’s back catalogue I’m sure it’s easier to digest. Intriguing.
By the time ‘Wolf on Your Threshold’ arrives the build is quicker to an insistent but unhurried beat before and half spoken accented female vocal drifts in after a couple of minutes. Der Blutharsch uses vocals largely as another texture of instrument though occasionally as a simple accent or adornment to songs that see structures like verses and choruses a foreign concepts in their world. This is mood music dark and brooding and while you could call it Gothic it’s not modern or old school Gothic, nothing like the way that Play Dead or Sisters played it and nothing like the new school do either. This is the sort of dry dirge that you imagine they would have had on in the background when you entered their castles or deconsecrated churches.
‘You Bring Low’ that follows has a little more urgency but the same unhurried female vocal though here there’s a sense that their Cocteau twins like snatches mean more in context here. They certainly add more accent and texture to the wailing guitar and crashing drums that play some nice patterns yet are there to be felt more than heard. ‘El Ocarso’ has drums and electronic sounds more to the fore as it grooves and crawls and builds and finally a repeated guitar riff, all light and languid and confident, comes in over the beat that is you find kind of uplifting and livelier than anything it’s left in its wake. And as the second guitar wails away that refrain endures and explores as the vocals finally cut in but just here to add sweeping accents over the sumptuous soloing. It’s a definite sonic high-point.
‘Land of Free’ sounds like it begins with amplified eastern instruments over a meandering drum beat that envelops you in its bassy notes and a hypnotic vocal cuts in that in turn is pushed aside by some impassioned soloing it’s the most energetic and hypnotic song yet and has the weightiest vocal contribution yet before like a lot of the songs here it falls into a heap rather than simply end. It’s bookmarked by ‘Interludo’ which sounds like the soundtrack to two slowly moving spacecraft slowly skirting each other in deep dark space. It’s short and sweet.
The album closes with three more sinister machinations: title track ‘What Makes you Pray’ has more of a beat, its more urgent,and builds as a darker vocal spoken word interjects. There is a backwash of electronic sounds and lilting strummed guitars all angular and metallic before it just shuts down; whilst ‘Right’ starts like a sinister lullaby and builds with plunked keys across brooding deeper notes, and when you think it just might explode ghostly vocals drift in and the song ends. It’s one of the very few disappointments here.
The album ends with ‘Time’ which begins with the sounds of the workings of steampunk machinery building to a regular beat before vocals wash over intimating that time passes by, and after a switch in tone it starts up again and reboots before ending with minutes of ambient hum, that rather sound like you’ve just forgotten to switch something off…