Krohm
The Haunting Presence

The world of Depressive Black Metal is increasingly crowded with self-proclaimed aspiring suicides whom we expect never to reach the next release (yet they do, those scoundrels!); clones of Xasthur, Leviathan, Abyssic Hate, and company sprout like mushrooms, usually relying on some big name to do a Split and tell the world that they too do not like life. Thus, Depressive Black is starting to be oversaturated, and today, in the year of our Lord 2008, we wonder why the depressed increase, but not the suicides: strange, huh? But among them, there are also those who have decided not to pretend to have the noose around their necks and to be on the brink of ending it all while still playing Depressive Black.
His name is Dario Derna, the name of his One Man Band (strange, huh?) is Krohm; the guy is Italian-American and not new to extreme metal. Indeed, our Dario had played in Evoken (an important Funeral Doom band) and Funebrarum (a pivotal Death band) around the mid-nineties and then closed himself in an artistic silence that lasted until the beginning of the new century. It was then that he founded his musical project, Krohm, in which he aimed to fuse the sweetness of vaguely Doom melodies with the malaise and frustration of the now mature Depressive Black; yes, because people like Judas Iscariot, Shining, Silencer, Forgotten Woods, the aforementioned Abyssic Hate, Xasthur, and Leviathan, and (last but not least) Burzum, had already done their dirty work. But allow me to name two bands that, in describing Krohm's music, are much more significant than the more important groups I mentioned: Dolorian and Forgotten Tomb (especially the latter, from our part of the world).
Our Dario, while he did not have the burden of creating the genre from a Black offshoot, still chose a more personal path; certainly, his competitors would have been fewer, but managing to make Black and Doom get along is not that easy. Yet he succeeded. He did so in his two Demos ("Slayer Of Lost Martyrs" and "Crown Of The Ancients," re-released in 2005) and in his masterpiece ("A World Through Dead Eyes"). But he only partially succeeds in this new "The Haunting Presence"; I say this with almost certainty that fans and critics will disagree with me, but, in the end, this is a free website, and if I write here, it's precisely for the Divine Freedom that reigns on these pages; in other words, I don't give a damn.
"A World Through Dead Eyes" stole my heart; a backlit photo of malaise and loneliness. This new album tries again; but how can a digital camera compete with a reflex? Same subject, same "photographer," but the photo is dull and even a bit blurry. A tearful and opiate guitar serves up evaporated riffs, too evaporated, which rarely leave a mark. The blame is not on the production; the sound is indeed crystal clear (as is fashionable with modern Black bands) and rich in never-excessive Delay. Even the arrangements, when present, are delicate and discreet. The problem is that our artist, in trying to make the sound alienating and lysergic, has thought it wise to overlay too many guitar tracks in an operation that reminded me very much of the one performed by Blut Aus Nord in their latest "Odinist." The result is a confused sound that does not allow the riffs to penetrate the listener's mind, masking them, dissolving them. Everyone knows that I love dulling sounds, but before you're quick to call me contradictory, I'll proceed with my defense.

"In Black Metal, you must seek sensations more than sounds," Maestro Fallen used to tell me when he guided me during my novitiate. That's how I learned to appreciate the buzzes and slashes of Xasthur and Striborg; their distant and faded riffs, their art in setting feelings to music with the same spontaneity with which they arise. But more than anything else, in the artists I've previously mentioned, I loved their minimal attitude. Krohm does the exact opposite; he doesn't make the sound "atmospheric" using minimalism as a tool but uses redundancy and excess. The record loses its distinctiveness; Dario Derna's compositional talent remains, noticeable in some riffs typical of his musical taste ("Bleak Shores", "Lifeless Serenade"), but the straightforward and harsh unease of his previous record got lost along the way. His excellent screaming remains, angry but communicative, but the songwriting has gaps; many ideas are casually discarded. I'm sorry to have only given this album a passing grade, and I don't deny that I had many expectations about it; unfortunately, reality was a harsh mother.
As a note, I inform you of the presence of two tracks in Italian, "I Respiri Delle Ombre" and "Tra La Carne E Il Nulla". I spontaneously feel inclined to compare Krohm's musical parable to that of Forgotten Tomb: after a truly emotional work ("Slayer Of Lost Martyrs/Crown Of The Ancients" for the former, "Songs To Leave" for the latter), both managed to give a more mature shape to their approach ("A World Through Dead Eyes" and "Springtime Depression"). Both then wanted to try to take the big step and make their intentions more grandiose; the result was a partial abdication of the devastating sentiment expressed in their early works ("The Haunting Presence" and "Love's Burial Ground"). If the next step for our artist must respect the parallelism with Forgotten Tomb and be comparable to "Negative Megalomania," all that remains is to fear for the fate of Krohm.