Black Cilice — Transfixion of Spirits

Black Metal, perhaps, is the most popular- yet extreme form of the genre. It has many different subgenres whose roots are in the so-called, Raw Black Metal. At the dawn of the  of the form almost all Black Metal bands had such a sound - raw, dirty, unbalanced, close to rehearsal recordings of garage punk bands. Over time, the sound and professionalism of the musicians improved, raising the “underground” bands to a higher level. However, Raw Black Metal has firmly taken its place in the hearts and minds of musicians and fans, forming a fairly large army of supporters around the world.

The Portuguese Black Metal scene has a fairly large number of bands adhering to the original canons of the genre and playing Raw Black Metal. One such project is the One-man-band Black Cilice, which over its ten years of existence has gained an almost cult status. Nothing is known about the name of the founder and participant of this project; he prefers to remain anonymous. The first Black Cilice demo cassette was released in 2009. Since then, the project has released seven demos, two  EPs, seven split albums, three compilations, and four full-length albums. In 2019, German label Iron Bonehead Productions released the fifth full-length Black Cilice album, entitled Transfixion of Spirits. The album was released in several physical formats - LP, CD, and Audio Tape. At the time of writing this review, the album is at pre-order stage.
 
 
The album cover is a black and white photo of a single member of Black Cilice. He stands in a thick grey fog, and is wearing a black cloak with a hood. His face, on which corpse paint is applied, is thrown up. Lowered arms are wrapped in a thick chain. At the bottom of the cover is a contrasting white-colored  Black Cilice logo, made in a rather infantile style, but with-in the canons of the sub-genre. This is more like a hasty sketch made by a marker. In my opinion, this cover is traditional/ standard Black Metal, which, while not very original,  it nevertheless, turned out to be quite atmospheric.
 
 
The album, with a total duration of just over thirty-six and a half minutes, consists of four tracks.
In my opinion, it would be more appropriate to talk about the Transfixion of Spirits album in general terms, without stopping on separate tracks, since they are all made in a single key. Honestly, the tracks are so similar that  at moments I didn’t know which track I was listening to. Black Cilice on this new album presents us with a very dirty and raw black metal, which, despite this, is also very atmospheric. All tracks have a clear compositional structure and consist of three or four different parts in terms of melody and tempo- there are both high-speed moments and an average pace. In the guitar parts, there is lots of tremolo, characteristic of all varieties of Black Metal. It is worth noting there are very good melodic lines here, which, as it seemed to me, are quite simple, having some folk motifs.
 
Now I’d like to move onto the all over sound quality. The only more or less good and clear sound is the drum part. The sound of guitars and bass is very blurry, there is a large amount of reverb. It seems that the parts of the guitars were recorded in a hall with metal walls. Despite this, the sound has a claustrophobic hue. Looking at the cover of an album, one can imagine that the sound spreads in thick fog. The vocal line seemed to me too unclear. I could not make out a single word. I couldn’t even understand what an unnamed Black Cilice member vocal timbre. This is most unlike the classic more c flashy Black Metal vocals. It also seemed to me that there were elements of background keyboards on the album, but I can’t be sure of that. However, all of the above cannot be attributed to the shortcomings of the album. Rather, it creates a space for imagination. I can’t say how other listeners will feel it, but during listening, my hearing perceived the main melodic line, and the mind interpreted and created sound landscapes. It’s like with a Rorschach test or listening to Ambient, Drone or HNW. In this regard, I wonder if it’s advisable to classify this as a kind of Raw Black Metal as metal in general? due the blurred/droning feel of the album, then Transfixion of Spirits could be safely attributed to the Raw Guitar Drone Ambient genre, or something similar. Of course, there are elements characteristic of Black Metal here. I heard echoes of early Darkthrone, Graveland and so on. However, the general atmosphere and sound quality tilts this album to a less metal side.
 
 
In general, Transfixion of Spirits is a rather interesting and complete album, which has one, in my opinion, a big flaw. The monotony/ lack of variation. While listening, by the middle of the third track I was often feeling  little bored. As a result, I finished listening to the entire album without much desire to return for a while. However, that’s just my take on it, and you may find more in here to pull you back in again.