Salient

Black Boned Angel: Bliss and Void Inseparable

By Chris Walker | 10 Jul, 2006

As a seventeenyear-old, it took weeks of torturous listening to get past the first track on Neurosis’ Through Silver In Blood, a thirteenminute dirge on an album that mostly resists any sort of climax. I enjoyed every failed attempt to push through, but it was emotionally exhausting, the audio equivalent of masturbating with a handful of razor blades and something I’ve been searching to replicate ever since. ‘Fast forward’ six years and I’ve amassed an album collection largely created by huge hairy men attempting to tune their guitars lower than each other, make their songs last longer and go even slower. Six years is a very long time in doom-metal and things have only gotten more ridiculous.

Campbell Kneale is known most amongst connoisseurs of sonic art for running the splendid Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label and for his works under Birchville Cat Motel, which has crystallised over the years into the Dao of Drone. Sublime, transcendent and one of NZ’s best kept secrets, as he is free to wander the Hutt Valley unmolested by bearded noiseniks. The final track of his US tour CD Chi Vampires introduced some thunderous riffs (and what sounds like Aleister Crowley samples) into the blissed-out murk and this darker tone he has chosen to explore in his new project Black Boned Angel treads similar ground to spooky American drone merchants SUNN O))).

Although the name is a nod to Godflesh, the loudhailer vocals of the awe-inspiring Supereclipse EP are gone, and more of the BCM side has been folded over, making this 60 minute piece similar in tone to the more tensely wound parts of a Corrupted epic. The earlier sections feature a speedier riff reminiscent of early Earth, circa the Encapsulated Extraction EP, but this is a more atmospheric effort with ominous piano, the obligatory Kneale guitar skree and low monastic chanting. Definitely one for a romantic night in then.