Striborg
Embittered Darkness / Isle de Morts

"Forever lost in the maze of social inadequacy

Fearing and loathing their disgusting presence

Shall the earth ever be cleansed of this parasite?

Will mother earth take her revenge?"

With these words, one could summarize the main thought of Sin-Nanna, the dark figure behind the Striborg project, a new depressive colossus devoted for over ten years to a black metal (although the term is reductive) challenging and extremely personal.

Striborg's musical proposition is not easy to describe (nor to listen to), due to the fact that it is music without parallels in the history of said genre, except possibly distant parallels like Xasthur and Leviathan, which often deviates significantly from black/ambient bases to flow into cacophonic litanies, where the listener is forced to make a choice: either immediately interrupt the magic that this artist conjures from simple buzzing guitar notes or continue to fully immerse in the emotional abyss created by the over 70 minutes of this: "Embittered Darkness/Isle de Morts".

70 minutes in which to lose oneself in hallucinating forests distorted by the sadness and melancholy of creeping synth sounds, mosquito-like guitars sometimes annoying for their relentless desire to shred your neurons, with drums marking the slowed tempos of the tracks (always of medium to long duration) to then move to a tremendous rush where Sin Nanna's tormented voice screams at the top of his lungs his repressed hatred towards humanity, the destroyer of his beloved rainforests.

And it is precisely the voice, together with the other elements aimed at erecting a wall of muddy and hypnotic sounds, that creates the sense of claustrophobia and isolation of this work. A voice that comes from afar, echoing among the thick of the forest, extending suffering over arcane phrases.

"Wrapped In a Cocoon Out of Harms Way", "Race Of Apathy" and "The Cold Slumber That Awaits Me"; are just the most significant examples that ooze from the whole work. In these tracks, the typically black sound of the guitars is frayed to the extreme, a wave of death and solitude rises above the unsuspecting spectators of the forest, a synth veil crawls over it and drums create the impetuous foundations, a natural cacophony that wants to disturb the listener and leave them stunned in the face of this immense alien chasm that appears blurred among the fungi of the undergrowth and the ancient trees' leafy branches as old as the earth itself.

This collection (dating back to 2006) contains one of the band's first demos (previously called Kathaaria), plus new material (collectively named: "Embittered Darkness"), in line with the recent and numerous productions by Sin Nanna. All 16 tracks of the album are intended to create an alienating and at times annoying atmosphere, which initially might lead, as already mentioned, to total rejection by the listener, but after repeated listening, can reveal its more intimate side, directly linked to the forests and the spirits dwelling within them.

I recommend listening only to those who are already familiar with this genre, although everyone should try to engage with this emotional colossus without any sort of prejudice.

Let yourself be surrounded by the nocturnal forest...