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Rating: An authentic gem from the production of the great Der Blutharsch And Infinite Church Of The Leading Head by Albin Julius is being reissued, namely Angel Of Darkness, originally released in 2016 only in cassette format in collaboration with Skullflower and later made available digitally. The Skullflower are a British noise-rock group (led by guitarist Matthew Bower) that evolved from a doom metal sound towards sonic solutions dedicated to abrasive drone-noise. Nothing could be more logical than their collaboration with the new psychedelic incarnation of Der Blutharsch (something that had already happened in a track on the compilation Today I Want To Catch Clouds). Angel Of Darkness is a crazy and delirious album; the sound is an expansive and fluid rock that reminded me of the LSD-based mental journeys of Amon Düül II’s Yeti. The effect is cathartic and leads us into unexplored and spatial territories. Never have Blutharsch managed to be as liquid and out of their minds as on this occasion. From the initial “Is This What You Told Us,” we are enveloped by a dirty, raw, and lysergic sound: it feels like being in the Black Forest in the midst of an ancient pagan ritual. And there is definitely something sacred in this music: the hypnotic and timeless atmosphere of “Psychonaut” is minimal, characterized by a pulsating bass and electric guitars, but the sound seems to come from another time dimension. The title-track begins calmly with the sounds of a spatial piano and continues with dark ambient layers. The concluding “Black Screen” is finally the lucid delirium of a shaman in trance: only slight percussion and gloomy drones lead us to visit a desecrated cathedral buried in the ocean. A confirmation of how these two artists are increasingly approaching a boundaryless conception of sound. Available on Bandcamp: https://derblutharsch.bandcamp.com/album/angel-of-darkness.
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