Silvaplana - Sils Maria / Limbs of Dionysus (Augur Tongues / IARNWITH)
Silvaplana is the latest of many projects to emerge from the four fevered minds of Yellow Eyes, with bassist Alexander DeMaria (of Anicon and Urushiol acclaim) drawing from the Odz Manouk playbook to debut with two albums at once. Given the well-earned underground acclaim of Sunrise Patriot Motion’s blackened post-punk, Ustalost’s crystalline psychedelia, and Vilkacis’ minimalist dirges, DeMaria has great expectations ahead of him as part of Yellow Eyes extended black metal canon – a body of work rivalled perhaps only by the members of Krallice or Blut aus Nord. As if to prove DeMaria’s great range both as a solo musician and lone composer, Sils Maria and Limbs of Dionysus are two very different sides of the same cryptic denarius – one trading in desaturated, ghostly tones, the other a roiling, twisting ride.
Silvaplana - Sils Maria (Augur Tongues / IARNWITH)
Just like the cover art’s depiction of the iconic Hotel Waldhaus (located in the titular Swiss municipality), Sils Maria fades in like a half-forgotten memory with the grace of its spidery guitar and ethereal organ. While Lychgate have made a name for the organ in metal as a tool for bombastic liturgical pronouncements, DeMaria instead utilises it with subtlety for an eerie backdrop. To dispose of another inevitable comparison, Yellow Eyes’ mournful ambience can be felt in several grim samples that recall Rare Field Ceiling. Thankfully, Sils Maria has a vibe wholly its own thanks to its slower, doomier pace – a grey and eerie dream laced with gothic melancholy. Indeed, Silvaplana wrinkle their airy and nimble atmosphere with a murky patina, wherein these and other instrumental elements can drift and coalesce without getting lost in the mix. There is no dominant instrument here, and sometimes the emphasis can even shift in the same song. “V” opens as a sparse construct of organs, drums, and piano, until a guitar melody germinates halfway through. Measured drums and growling vocals definitely inject some energy into the proceedings, but it’s impressive how heavy the music is without being particularly heavy sonically. The gravity owes to a spiritual dimension that is funereal without being melodramatic, and “II” and “IV” showcase how even tentative threads of piano can provide an elegiac lustre, hinting at the disorienting fatalism of 90 Day Men’s Panda Park, or the dejected reverie of Pram’s “Shadows”. This timbral variety, slowness of pace, and decentralised approach to melody is perhaps an even more pertinent point of comparison with these ‘post-rock’ outliers than vibes alone. Sils Maria is one of a handful of good examples that hint at what ‘post-black metal’ perhaps always should have meant. That is, an expansion of timbre that occurs simultaneously with a rejection of conventional song-writing and wider genre tropes – not, as it has come to mean, mere atmoblack with surface level genre-blends and mass-appeal moody melodicism. Of course, the keys pair well with jangling guitars and stately percussion for a thudding dirge, but the instrumentation (and catharsis) never truly swells to a level that contradicts the record’s stately and unusually delicate construction. No matter how aggrieved the vocals (“II” is positively hair-raising), Sils Maria’s focused melodicism does not allow for melodrama. Therein lies its staying power.
Silvaplana - Limbs of Dionysus (Augur Tongues / IARNWITH)
If you listen to these releases in the order reviewed here, Limbs of Dionysus will come to you as a sudden avalanche bursting through fog. While Sils Maria is an exercise in ghostly restraint, Limbs is a vein-popping, high-endurance flex. “I” immediately kicks into gear with brutalising (yet nimble) drums and far more aggressive, ghoulish vocals, making for a knotty BM banger a la Predatory Light with the vicious death metal influence of Urushiol stoking its engines to boot. A fitting soundtrack, perhaps, to the dismemberment of Pentheus during the Bacchanalia, as displayed in monochrome on the cover. There is certainly something tortuous in its development, because DeMaria refuses to provide the same space in the mix that Sils Maria offers in spades, as if the sparse yet intertwined pieces of its ghostly predecessor were petrified and forced into a tomb. This isn’t by simple rawness or compression, but because plenty of detail and strength is given to both bass and treble, which bicker and concur in equally relentless measure with no keys in earshot. The opener rattles along as if desperately navigating a catacomb, surrounding the listener on all sides from high and low pitch. It climaxes with great panic about seventeen minutes in, when scurrying blast-beats double up with thunderous, pummelling bass while the guitars collapse away from treble to a claustrophobic, genuinely intense freakout. Exhausted into a catharsis, it closes as the organ makes a welcome return blossoming in the music's carcass. “II”, on the other hand, twists and spirals forward almost playfully at first, ratcheting down the intensity from “I” for a more measured approach that allows itself to breathe more freely, with the song's focus shifting to the treble and the Quebecois-style hammer-ons providing some flourishes. Around the 6:30 mark, the tone becomes more serious as a mélange of riffs evoke Yellow Eyes’ tense and meditative grooves on Sick with Bloom, with more aggressive usage and a deathly flavour. The work develops much like “I” into more crepuscular territory, only this time allowing the organ to play alongside it before fading into twinkling synths, feedback, and droning bass tones.
The conclusion of Limbs of Dionysus reveals the most important link between it and Sils Maria, despite the companion records' vastly different approaches. Both are thoughtfully linear, meditative journeys, with songs creeping forward in gradually shifting layers and foregoing specific setpiece melodies for a deep, slow, shifting burn. Each is a whole even greater than its parts, the songs forming a tissue upon which a deeper set of lasting emotional states supervene. Like a profound experience, the emotional impact of these works persists strongly in the mind, even if their individual moments are not always easily recalled. Silvaplana can proudly sit alongside the most profound works of DeMaria’s bandmates – a truly impressive achievement.