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Rating: Can you imagine eternity? Can you perfectly picture it in your mind?
Of course not.
Everything has an end. It is almost impossible to imagine time stretching forever. Just thinking about it makes you feel dizzy and let yourself fall to the ground.
David Tibet, the frontman and mastermind of the ingenious Current 93, once again manages to describe this sensation of perverse disorientation with perfect emotion. As soon as the first chords start, you already feel covered in darkness, gazing at the sky, which is slowly being devoured by menacing and poetic ships, in that parenthesis dividing day from night called sunset. It is an apocalyptic, arcane, and sepulchral folk that is presented to us amid the sharp notes.
In this apocalyptic journey, many names from the folk scene join, including the wonderful, almost asexual voice of Antony: where male and female genders blur, to release intense vital emotions. Bonnie Prince Billy is also present, delivering an intense performance of the central track of the album: "Idumea", a 1700s hymnal presented in seven versions by seven interpreters.
Seven... a mystical, mysterious, intriguing, and unknown number.
Because this is a mysterious work, a chest of secrets (as the legendary Pink Floyd would say), alternating nocturnal fragilities (the intense "Sunset", which seems drawn in black ink, almost like a metaphor for an ancient and dark pain, like the world we live in) with moments of extreme violence (the roaring and pounding guitars of "Black Ships Ate The Sky", the catastrophic vision of a world in pieces, with that unforgettable "Who will deliver me from myself?" repeated multiple times with devotion and spiritual pain).
The apocalyptic folk tones are immersed in atmospheres reminiscent of acoustic Virgin Prunes or Swans with amplifiers turned off, but comparisons are pointless: here is David Tibet with his immense, captivating voice, telling us about his boats devouring the sky.
Intentionally pessimistic, the album is a work of extraordinary allure, in whose grooves you will find truly poignant ballads (the macabre, intense, and heartbreaking poetry of a pearl of wisdom like "Blind Your Tortoise Mouth" even brings tears).
When death and decadence become art.
Eternity in 76 minutes.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
09 Bind Your Tortoise Mouth (02:30)
Bind your tortoise mouth
With mist and curved teeth
The main junk had been cracked
And whilst the laughter melted
Into smaller worlds like whirlpools
Sucking in the slaughtering sheep
I looked at your face
In pearl light and sleeping
The clouds that kiss your mouth
Silver lidded the moon
That laughed and cried whilst
The crumbs of night that leap into shadow
As windows close
And curtains open
Just as smoke might
If God could give it holes
You were not alone in sanctus sound
As bell shafts spires into liquid
Dogs and cats curl and arch
Into kittens again
But from the corner of my eye
I see black ships have killed the sky
You're not alone in sanctus sound
As bell shafts spires into liquid
Dogs and cats curl and arch
Into kittens again
Yet from the corner of my eye
I see black ships have killed the sky
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Other reviews
By mementomori
Tibet rediscovers here the role that suits him best: that of hallucinated and possessed prophet, once again unfurling just that theatrical component that had been dormant for a while.
Black Ships ate the Sky is dominated by the obsessive pulsating of the electric guitar... a crescendo of high intensity, a delirium culminating in the obsessive repetition of the phrase 'who will deliver me from myself!'
