REVERORUM IB MALACHT - The Holy Grail of Speculative Metal
Reverorum ib Malacht is one of the bands that is taking extreme metal to unexplored territories due to the extreme experimentation to which they subject all the elements that make up their music. They are a perfect definition of what Speculative Metal is. All the sound parameters of his compositions are approached from a new perspective by applying Salazar's Law so that "an entirely new sound world" emerges (Salazar, "Fundamental concepts in the history of music", 2004:210). https://speculativemetal.blogspot.com/2024/04/salazars-law-2.html
Reverorum ib Malacht delves into unknown regions within the genre where each parameter is subjected to limitless experimentation:
- The guitar riffs that are the basis of any metal band are absent in a good part of their compositions or their role is secondary, ceding the main role to the drums and the textures and atmospheres. When the guitars have more prominence, they are usually focused as samplers, as textures, with minimalist and circular arpeggios, and finally with a great variety of what we understand by aggressive riffs, etc. This makes its sound truly original.
- The drums play an essential role since the vast majority of the songs are built on them and not on the guitar riffs as is usually the norm. To this we must add its improvised character in a large part of the compositions but not through the use of jazzy or progressive patterns as is usually done within extreme metal, but through purely aggressive patterns based on blast beats and double bass drum sections. According to their members, these batteries were intended as shamanic percussions in the sense that their function is to direct you into mental trance with ritual objectives to access deep levels of consciousness. To this we must add the amount of manipulations to which they are subjected to alter their sound. The study and assimilation of percussions in RiM is absolutely necessary for bands of the future that want to follow their path.
- In the following texts the situation is common in which adjectives and sentences are exhausted to describe how incredibly varied, well performed and inspired the voices are throughout their entire discography. Please come in, listen and judge for yourself.
- The shape of his compositions does not follow the established canon, as might be assumed. The way of approaching the formal construction of his music is based on the rhizomatic speculative form where each part can be a brick of a Lovecraftian temple built following prohibited plans of non-Euclidean and rhizomatic anarchitectures. Unlike a Spectral Metal song, anything can happen here. All possibilities are open. The unpredictable, the irrational, the unexpected is the norm.
- Production is finally the secret weapon of Reverorum ib Malacht (and it should be of any band that aspires not to repeat hackneyed, unsurprising and already amortized patterns). RiM are here to make music, not to compose another extreme metal song like the thousands that are already out there. As Relgneps Razalas says about RiM: "All the elements are subjected to extreme experimentation that will twist, mutate and decompose them to be reassembled under a new form that shines for its novelty. And that brilliance is blinding, as blinding is the dreamlike prose of Mircea Eliade or Reza Negarestani. And that brilliance will lead us to madness..." (Metallorum Mutatio: Corpus Theoreticum, chapter 2, "Historical Psuedomorphoses").
A selection from Reverorum ib Malacht's extensive discography is analyzed below. We focus on the musical elements. The concepts (philosophical, religious, aesthetic...) derived from his letters and texts are left out due to their complexity and lack of time, but they are also of very high interest.
Each album is different. Reverorum ib Malacht continues to manage to be unpredictable in a totally impressive way, with a creativity that seems to have no limits.
Step into the madness. Drink from the Holy Grail of Speculative Metal...
What Do You Think Of The Old God, We Call Him Judas (2005 Demo)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/what-do-you-think-of-the-old-god-we-call-him-judas
In 2005 few bands were proposing speculative experimentations at the level of RiM. You can already see the basic characteristics of the band. Two very long songs in a very dark ceremonial atmosphere. Reverorum ib Malacht have not come to repeat ideas from other bands so be prepared for the unexpected. These songs are built with very basic but incredibly effective elements: ghostly keyboard harmonies, drums with minimalist patterns and top-notch voices that make the feeling of ritual very accentuated.
The first thing that catches our attention when the compositions progress is the absence of guitars and bass. This causes a feeling of estrangement, we cannot hold on to the riffs as a known element.
The drums take on a lot of prominence as they deploy their resources in a linear way but with a large amount of nuances and also highlights the improvisation that is present in their narrative. Improvisation is one of the great pending areas in extreme metal and RiM will make it an essential primary symbol in their style. The production is part of the DEEP FOG, with elements hidden behind the textural plot and with the saturation applied to the keyboards, maximum in some moments of the second song.
DEMO 09
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/demo-09
Unpredictable is the perfect word to define this demo. The deep fog covers everything, the lo-fi sound transports us to a truly oppressive atmosphere. Linear and minimalist drums hidden in the distance supported by texural layers of keyboards that are the basis on which excellent ritual voices unfold the liturgical texts in Latin.
The secondary role that the guitars have in these compositions is once again surprising, marginalized to a mere harmonic and static accompaniment based on eternal arpeggios. The almost total absence of riffs (there are exceptions later) makes the music stand out for its atmosphere since there are no narrative elements that stand out but everything is under the domain of the environmental textures, making the abstraction produce an even more powerful result. than the concrete and material ornamentation of a riff-based composition.
Emil, one of the band members, refers to this in the excellent Bardo Methodology interview:
"'Okay, forget about riffs – let's create ominous sounds.' I've never articulated or even considered it in this way before, but I believe that was my primary revelation."
The production of the drums is worthy of mention with a really deep and heavy bass drum sound and with a snare altered towards the treble in its timbre and with bells as added effects. The result is original and makes us see what a metal group can gain when it avoids standardized sonorities in percussion.
De Mysteriis Dom Christi - CD version (2014)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/de-mysteriis-dom-christi-cd-original-master
This is Reverorum ib Malacht's first masterpiece, a triple album, with different music in each format (LP, CD, K7). The compositions are complex and full of details. All resources are deployed again so that the atmosphere is the primary symbol of the sound aesthetics. The excellent vocals are supported by a base of infinite and hypnotic drums with passages of blast beats and double kick drum patterns that extend to the horizon.
Once again the band leaves the entire melodic and harmonic role in charge of the synthesizers and keyboards since the guitars and bass are almost absent. This absence is a declaration of intentions. What is present is as important as what is not, since it places us before a sound where those that are usually the main protagonists of the discourse (the riffs) are excluded in favor of the abstraction of the textural layers that extend like a sound liturgy. that is both oppressive and ethereal. When the guitars and bass appear they have a secondary and equally textural role, generally without standing out in the mix.
De Mysteriis Dom Christi - Tape version (2014)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/de-mysteriis-dom-christi-tape
The magnitudes that Reverorum ib Malacht handles are outside the rest of the bands. Within this triple album that is "De Mysteriis dom Christi" consists of two extensive songs that are each an album in themselves.
The variety of ideas and resources is amazing. Each instrument will be subjected to the general plot, making a continuous, complex and collective narrator remind us of the experimental novel "The Lost Notebook" by Evan Dara. In the first song, everything flows, everything is multiple, the variation is constant but the atmosphere is always recognizable in its hallucinogenic character. It seems that improvisation is present, especially in the drums, but the joint plot has an insane and inevitable logic that makes everything move forward without us being able to oppose it.
The second track is even more psychedelic than the first, with altered drums and vocals dominating everything, especially in a really atmospheric and textural second half.
De Mysteriis Dom Christi - Vinyl version (2014)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/de-mysteriis-dom-christi-vinyl
Long tracks remain the foundation of this version of the album, with improvised drums over shifting textural layers. The guitars are almost completely absent and the voices also have less prominence. All the arrangements on this album are more minimalist and contained, but the atmosphere and insistence on abstract, metaphysical and nebulous textures have an evocative and unanswerable power.
Ter Agios Numini (2017)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/ter-agios-numini-2
Recorded in the winter of 2004 and on November 22, 2016. We can deduce that the old material is the two extensive songs that consist of RiM's excellent proposal of compositions with a layer of atmospheric and abstract textures on which the drums improvise blast beats and double bass drum patterns with great variety, all as a basis for the voices that sing songs in an insane way. The voices are recited freely, without subjecting themselves to any prosody in a way that accentuates rhythmic irrationality. On many occasions they are mere textural layers distorted to the maximum, to the point of saturation, making them sound inhuman.
When the percussion attacks stop, RiM once again deploys its inexhaustible arsenal of resources for the abstract and undefined sections where the protagonist is the atmosphere above all, creating an excellent Lovecratian atmosphere. Everything becomes indefinite and indeterminate, causing a feeling of distant but impossible to ignore threat.
While the first track consists mainly of textural layers of synths that create an ominous atmosphere, the last track, "Dwellings Are His That Die", deploys hidden Speculative Metal techniques with a truly fascinating advance in time. The atmosphere becomes really experimental. To the resources mentioned above we must add the modification of the sound elements to make them mutate using the recording studio as a compositional tool. From minute 5 onwards, alterations begin to occur in the drum sound where each beat is reformed at a sonic level to look for timbres that cause estrangement and disorientation. The application of timbral psychedelia takes us to the most interesting section of the composition, achieving a top-level dreamlike atmosphere. These experiments are reminiscent of those carried out by The Body in the context of extreme music, Kraut Rock bands or the most experimental psychedelia in the late sixties and early seventies.
Irma Malacht: Stora Tuna och Torsång (2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBckeJi-U64&list=OLAK5uy_lM0kRbV6viXVAmhXyyhRdgFnkD3J75hOw
(EP released in 2018 but recorded in 2011)
The beginning of the album is absolutely spectacular, as RiM adds lute, flute and cello to his sonic imagery. The dreamlike dominates everything in an enormously evocative atmosphere. It is difficult to overestimate the quality of the voices in Reverorum Ib Malacht: incredibly varied, excellently performed and with a truly effective ability to convey their message. The percussions are subtle, mixed in the background to maximize the atmosphere over the narrative. The music seems submerged in an illusory stasis as everything advances without apparently changing. The new elements are incorporated into the plot in a progressive and subtle way.
And suddenly an overwhelming silence announces a sudden change around minute 10. The consistency of the sound fabric is put to the test and we are irrevocably dragged towards the new auditory landscape, built again on distant percussions and ethereal but ominous textural layers. The suggested beauty shows a hidden threat but never definitively captured.
The synthesizers play a very important role in the last third of the song, where the guitars take over the main discourse in a development reminiscent of the best psychedelic kraut.
The second song is much more minimalist and abstract: noise and dialogues accompany us until an anticlimactic ending.
Im Ra Distare Summum Soveris Seris Vas ignoble (2018)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/im-ra-distare-summum-soveris-seris-vas-innoble
In this album, Reverorum ib Malacht begin to deploy speculative and experimental resources with even greater intensity if possible. The compositions are constructed with spectacular freedom. Any musical element arises and is added to the narrative in a totally unpredictable way, all the sound plot lines intersect and interact in such a surprising way that we are faced with a first-rate compositional work. All the textures, voices and instruments build an anarchitecture of prodigious complexity, and guide us through the different rooms of this sonic temple, causing our constant disorientation while increasing our amazement at what we witness.
The drums are more aggressive and faster than in previous albums, as a sign of later releases that will take the band to their maximum levels of aggressiveness. Percussion also continues to experiment with sound modifications using effects to alter its natural timbre.
The voices move through the songs like unleashed presences that infect the environment, corrupted in turn by the frequent samplers of Christian liturgical songs. The guitar riffs have more prominence than in previous albums but are still frequently relegated to the background within the album's narrative, leaving the main role to the keyboards and synthesizers, which establish the compositional basis in most of the songs.
Vad är inte sju huvud? (2020)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/vad-r-inte-sju-huvud
If with the previous album, Reverorum ib Malacht's already impressive capacities for experimentation were taking over the music, in this work "Vad är inte sju huvud?" We have to prepare ourselves to be hit again and again by the most experimental and speculative techniques applied to the band's sound.
Distorted guitars gain some weight on this album, surrounding everything with a more aggressive atmosphere when they are present. The riffs are varied and the dissonance is very present. But it is the percussions that continue to surprise. The drums are taken to levels that other bands cannot even conceive. They continue to be raised from improvisation, with parts that deploy blast beats and passages with very fast double bass drums, mixed abruptly with slower and mid-tempo sections with great naturalness. In addition, it must be added that the timbre of the drums is modified, adding effects to any of its parts, which results in a fascinating and very new sound. Among all the resources we find ourselves faced with polymorphic and unpredictable rhythms that make the discourse tend towards irrationality and dementia.
The voices once again shine at a very high level: the variety and quality is absolutely impressive: extreme voices are mixed with speeches and spoken word sections, loops... all treated with effects that deform the timbre or exposed with an ominous dryness. The voices adapt to the sung, intoned or chanted texts, varying in each song and elevate the atmosphere of the ensemble to maximum madness.
To the previous instrumental base we must add the continuous presence of textures: effects and settings once again have an important role within the album to enhance that feeling of estrangement. Psychedelia is unleashed and applied to an Extreme Metal context, provoking a sensation of dreamlike travel. Layered and nebulous textures that take us towards Speculative Metal.
The compositions on this album finally stand out for their great variety and contrast among themselves. The rhizomatic structure infects all music, which displays a diversity of musical and compositional resources that is difficult to match.
Not here (2021)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/not-here
The sound of Reverorum ib Malacht has been in constant evolution from the beginning and here we are faced with another crack through which the band penetrates in its limitless exploration
From the first second we see an evident change in the way of approaching the production of the drums, which have a more aggressive and industrial sound, moving away from the type of lo-fi production of the previous albums. This change is accompanied by another decision, since the percussions are placed in the foreground, leaving the rest of the instruments far behind in the mix, which accentuates the feeling of aggressiveness. It must also be added that the mix of the drum elements themselves change, although always with the bass drum in the foreground. There are certain subtleties that are added to the production and treatment of the sound of the cymbals, altering their sound (where the percussions added to the base of the drums stand out, as in the second track).
All these changes in terms of sound, timbre and production do not affect the stylistic approach, which is similar to previous albums. We are faced with extensive compositions where the drums establish the sound base (extensive sections of blast beats and double bass drum at high speeds) with a character that also makes us doubt the amount of improvisation in the music. Are the guitars the ones that follow the drums or is it the other way around?
Here the guitars are more present than on previous albums: aggressive tremolo riffs at high speed but placed far back in the mix. The third song stands out especially in terms of composition of riffs and ideas.
Excellent as always the voices. We run out of adjectives to describe them without repeating ourselves. They are varied, going from a ritual and solemn approach to a more aggressive and insane one. They are espectral voices, whose ghostly presence increases the contrast with the aggressiveness of the percussions. They are certainly one of the band's strong points album after album.
In the second theme another of the most notable aspects of Reverorum ib Malacht appears: the textures. An orchestral introduction is wildly interrupted by the drums but this time the texture accompanies us throughout the rest of the composition, increasing the sensation of a dreamlike journey. Here the plot and its different layers of synthesizers and keyboards practically replace the guitars to provide metaphysical textures that affect the unconscious by adding to the incessant attack of the drums, totally unleashed, which here increases its improvised character.
Svag i Döden (2021)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/svag-i-d-den
This is one of the best albums in Reverorum ib Malacht's discography. All the elements that make the band so special: wild discharges of improvised-mantra-drums, dense and spectral textures, voices of extreme dementia, complex and extensive compositions, etc... are present here but amalgamated with alchemical perfection. It should be noted that the guitars continue to gain weight with ideas and riffs very varied in aesthetics and resources, complemented by a bass that is also gaining prominence both in the mix and in the general plot of the album. The truly fascinating thing about this band is that anything can happen within their unfathomable music. The borders are diluted and cracks appear everywhere through which all imaginable blasphemies slip through.
Drums production continues to be absolutely spectacular. It is as if it were divided into several planes, with the cymbals standing out as they are recorded at the limit of saturation, making them distort to add nuances to the percussive texture. In this album the drums seem to be more established and written, accompanying the riffs with a mastery worthy of mention, although the constant variation and improvisation are still present, as for example in the second track, where the guitars are absent and are the textures of keyboards and atmospheres that dialogue with the storms of blast beats. The best example of speculative trance-drums is in the entire final section of the fourth song, an absolutely dazzling and blinding passage with an evocative power totally prohibited for other bands.
Vacuum. The mystery of faith. We proclaim your death oh Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again. Förlåtelse och Levitation (2022)
The complexity of this album is truly overwhelming. We are facing a band that is more unpredictable than ever at all levels.
The speech is totally deconstructed and fragmented at a sctructure level. The linear narrative is continually destroyed and it is as if the music wanted to be everywhere at once. The sound is deformed until it turns into glitches with a hyper-production that is reminiscent of the most industrial Dodheimsgard. Ideas and resources are exposed and changed at an overwhelming speed. And this happens at all levels: compositional, aesthetic, instrumental, vocal and timbral. To which we must add a proposal of several different types of production for the drums and percussion, with continuous jumps in the narrative of each composition and with very marked and constant contrasts in style between the different parts. A true creative melting pot.
Amphibian and mutant rhythms are intertwined with absolutely overwhelming tectonic patterns. The percussions and drums are at a very high level, both compositionally and technically. And this affects the album on a formal level since we are faced with cyclopean and fractal structures that disorient those who enter this sonic temple where all the rooms are connected through irrational wormholes that transport you from one side of the album to the other. without you being able to do anything but open your mouth and raise your eyebrows again and again in pure astonishment. The themes are related to each other in a way that makes you think that you are listening to the same fragment all the time with infinite variations.
The guitars and riffs are much more structured and more connected to the drums than on previous albums. The fully industrial bass and guitar sounds are like buildings demolishing inside your mind. The exposition of mid-tempo palm muted riffs dominate compositions that are more overwhelming than ever in this sense, leaving speed as an element that appears in a less constant way.
As for the voices, once again it is difficult for me to describe what I hear: their variety and quality of interpretation is amazing. The speeches launched in favor of the glory of God are made with a conviction that only a demented fanatic can achieve. The loops and repetitions are used with overwhelming mastery and manage to elevate your connection with the music to blinding and unbearable levels.
The battle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian is more balanced than ever in Reverorum ib Malacht (which until now has always leaned towards the second) and as a result we have a totally Faustian music, which does not respect limits and which destroys again and again the known borders in search of an eternal horizon, to the unknown Kadath or the eternal Jerusalem, under which lies what will never awaken.
Aieganzes Aigonzis : Angels of God (2023)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/aieganzes-aigonzis-angels-of-god
At this point in the analysis of Reverorum ib Malacht's discography we should not be surprised, but this album is once again a twist in their sound that includes many interesting new features.
After the atmosphere clearly framed in the industrial sound of "Vacuum...", the band continues exploring these terrains but experimenting with the resources and possibilities that this style poses. It's strange, but this album returns to those Reverorum ib Malacht from the beginning where the abstract and atmospheres were predominant over the facet of structures and riffs. Here the atmospheric returns to a first level but we replace those ritual and ceremonial environments of great darkness with cold and mechanical atmospheres where the textures tend towards noise. These particle and pointillist textures assault us from the beginning.
The extensive themes follow an apparently free structure but they all share the same path. They begin with layers and layers of noise and alien sounds that build a plot that looks outward and leaves the human behind. The drums and riffs end up appearing towards the end. Once again they are focused in a freer way than in the previous two albums: the drums are once again circular, with enormous freedom that makes us think again about improvisation as a resource used. Therefore, the riffs that accompany them could be framed in plot riffs that repeat like loops in complex structures that are enclosed under a disorientation that is difficult to penetrate.
It's fascinating how this band continues to look forward with a totally vehement attitude worthy of what should be called Speculative Metal.
Emet amen (2023)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/emet-amen
Bones, stone and decomposed flesh, only the dust and echo of a forgotten era remain. We are faced with one of the band's most diffuse and abstract albums, with an intimate but very oppressive character due to the darkness that reigns in all the compositions. As an example of this, the ominous and extensive fifth theme stands out, during which time will stop and you will only be freed when you hear the spectral chants of the final section.
The guitars disappear almost completely on this album, as they did on the band's first releases, and it is the bass (or a baritone guitar) that takes its place. The riffs, like the percussions, are spaced out, intangible... and reflect very well the feeling of death that hovers over all the compositions.
Kyrie Eleison (2023)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/kyrie-eleison
After two albums where slow, oppressive and abstract environments have dominated the sound of Reverorum ib Malacht, speed returns... And in what way. The speed explosion is evident from the beginning after the intro and we enter a sonic temple of chaos and schizophrenia. With the blast beats and double bass drum passages of unleashed drums, the guitar riffs are also back, trying to survive the vortexes of unbridled dementia. To do this, they embark on a battle of tremolos and strings, forcing them to jump and dive into the sound abyss.
The environmental sections are present but take a back seat although they are excellent and varied as usual. The voices are brilliant as always and seem to be performed by Attila Csihard himself with an overwhelming presence.
Aya Shi Karahn (2024)
https://malachtunlimited.bandcamp.com/album/aya-shi-karahn
"A movie for the blind about the cross."... And disoriented like people who have lost their vision, we advance through this unspeakable church that is the music of Reverorum ib Malacht. The sound abstraction welcomes us as we enter the album until we reach a terrain that we recognize well: a drum set saturated to the point of being almost noise improvises on metaphysical and spectral textures in a sonic whirlwind from which there is no escape.
The second song follows a similar pattern: after a cosmic-alchemical introduction, the drums improvises fast sections of double bass drum and blast beats on a circular arpeggiated guitar that are the basis for the ritual intonation of the texts by varied voices that use a multitude of resources and effects.
This deployment of resources would already be enough to stand out among experimental bands within extreme metal, but Reverorum ib Malacht adds one more element that is usually ignored by a large number of bands, and that is the possibilities of using the mix in the studio as a narrative element within the discursive plot of the compositions. The levels frequently vary between the different instruments, rotating the spotlight between voices, guitar, atmospheres or drums. This provokes a spectacular sensation of very welcome disorientation, providing continuous interest to the sound discourse that surrenders to psychedelia as the best weapon to get extreme metal out of its constricted established patterns.
The band, album after album, continues to manage to be unpredictable in a totally impressive way, with a creativity that seems to have no limits.
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