Judas Iscariot
Distant in Solitary Night

When you come across the one-man band Judas Iscariot, the judgments often vary. The good Andrew Jay Harris, aka Akhenaten, in keeping with the typical American individualism, decided to be the absolute master of his own monicker, composing the pieces in perfect solitude: like every project that does not involve exchange of opinions with other musicians, the universe created risks being self-referential as well as pervaded by monotony. "Distant in solitary night," the fourth full-length of the Illinois band, now dated 1999, lends itself more than other works of Akhenaten to arouse criticism, murmurs, or completely opposite reactions: considered by many as the pinnacle of his production, by others simply imitative trash, the album actually sits, without too many shocks, in the bosom of a USBM that from its origins has tried to transplant the Scandinavian black of Norwegian origin into American territory. The result, of which Judas Iscariot was one of the earliest examples, has not always borne the expected fruits: few variations on the theme, sometimes clumsy attempts, rare pearls. However, Akhenaten's influence on subsequent bands is undeniable: slow and atmospheric pieces, attempts at philosophical songwriting indebted to Heidegger and Nietzsche, anti-capitalist themes, a shower of anti-Christian nihilism that has often been wrongly thought to be NS regurgitations. "Distant in solitary night" represents the summary of Harris's cherished vision, quite uniform from the point of view of the musical proposal, but in its own way coherent and consciously an epigone of the Norwegian scene. If "The winds stant silent," "Black clouds roll under the parapet of the sky," and "To the black tower of victory" have their feet firmly planted in the early Darkthrone and Burzum, with prolonged and repeated riffs and monotone melody, invigorated by lo-fi accelerations in which the drumming, the true Achilles' heel of the multi-instrumentalist, appears timid and often out of time, "Where the winter beats incessant" and "In the bliss of the eternal valleys of hate" unfold through more cadenced times always keeping in mind the more atmospheric Vikernes, while the instrumental "The clear moon, and the glory of the darkness," with guitar and synth, slyly recalls the putative father Isengard. The platter closes with what is perhaps the pinnacle of the entire Judas Iscariot production, namely "Portions of eternity too great for the eye of man," an outro with repetitive and hypnotic progression, to whose charm one can succumb and which represents the perfect conclusion for an alternating album, but in its own way a synthesis of a personal path that shortly thereafter will inevitably come to an end: American black metal will subsequently take other paths.