Twilight
Twilight
Southern Lord, 2005

A melding of five of the most artistic minds of modern black metal, Twilight explores multifarious shades of colorless dimensions in existential torment, through delirious, funereal, and eruptive representations. Awakened from its misguided slumber, American black metal has taken shape as a disorienting nightmare of corrosive vehemence, an intriguing development offering a glimpse inside a vortex of virulent shadows screeching through suicidal discontent in intoxicated black hate.

These musicians of isolationist operation: Malefic (Xasthur), Wrest (Leviathan), Imperial (Krieg), Hildolf (Draugar), and Azentrius (Nachtmystium), each inject portions of their individual approach to black metal aesthetics in the creation of a sound that characterizes a merging of such interpretations yet reaches a level of presentation beyond natural combinations of elemental ideas. Twilight plunders desolated inner landscapes to which the dissatisfied spirit is cast to discover hidden truths, in the endeavor to conjure strength through a heightened sense of awareness which accompanies the deepest of solitudes. There are many paths to take towards this realization, and Twilight are clever to implement this reality within their craft, as each song is structured to represent a distinct portal offering deliverance from the discouraging travesties of a world collapsing in on itself. Much suffering dwells within these compositions, voiced in suffocating anguish, bled in guitars of rusted essence and harmonic weeping, hammered in rhythms that rage in madness and crawl in despair.

Initial encounters may bring whispers of empty promises, for the truth of this music lies in secrecy. "Larval Liaise" and the somberly-gazing-through-windows-of-frost "Beyond Light (Beautiful And Malignant)" flow in deceptive slow-motion, yet return confrontations are rewarded as layers of revelations unfold in eremitic shifts like the creeping arrival of winter. Thrashing madness in clinical coldness laced with streaming melodies of cursed dreams in the form of "Hopeless Etheride" and "Swollen Voices In Silence" strike from an immediate intent, slicing through the smokescreen with a hatred alien to the oblivious. Bitterness of deep winter winds blow harshly through this music within each compositional framework, reflecting temptations of suicidal emotions in the grip of melancholic disenchantment and murderous visions aroused in misanthropic isolation.

Twilight presents a glance towards an advance for black metal’s potential future. It is too easy to cast this release aside as a mere black metal footnote. Identifiable characteristics from the particular personalities involved are recognized in certain passages, yet overall this work succeeds in finding a separate voice. Collectively, these musicians stand at the threshold of something far grander than anything their individual efforts have achieved, most of which finds a position amongst the best works during this era of the genre. As yet it is undeveloped in cohesion and emotionally inconsistent, however, there is enormous potential within the foundation.

1/31/06

1. Woe is the Contagion
2. Exact Agony, Take Life
3. Larval Liaise
4. As the March of Worms
5. Winter Before
6. White Fire Under Black Text
7. Hopeless Etheride
8. Swollen Voices in Silence
9. Beyond Light (Beautiful and Malignant)

Southern Lord

Twilight Discography

Twilight -Twilight (Southern Lord, 2005)