Review Summary: Cure and Curse.
Part of me usually struggles to keep politics and news headlines outside the spectrum of music reviewing, and I am used to win the fight against these very visceral and conscience devouring feelings, at least most of the time. Rarely they leak into my writing, but these last days I have reached my limit, folks, and
The Buried Storm has been that very last drop. Darkher's second album, the long awaited follow up to the astonishing
Realms of 2016, conjures emotions that feed on a profound darkness, a spiritual hollow caused by the unavoidable empathy I’ve been accumulating through the constant flow of stories of rape and violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian women and children during the unlawful and barbaric occupation of their land. Everyone has a limit, and this last week, I’ve just reached mine.
I've failed to deflect these feelings, and instead I've made them my own. I’ve been glued to the news, witnessing the pain inflicted on the victims of this uncalled war on a daily basis, trying to imagine what these families are going through and falling short of mental fortitude, because no matter how much you try to picture an idea of what it has been like for them, these are horrors that simply surpass the boundaries of human imagination. Jayn Maiven, the artist behind Darkher, has, maybe accidentally, materialized the impending sorrow I’ve been burdened with these days like no other artist has done in a long time. A few seconds in, her voice falls on a mantle of cello strings and somber violin like blood stained dew, like the voice of a broken spirit trying to mend an even more broken body but failing to heal scars that, as sure as dawn drowns the night, they will never be healed, left instead to vanish on that limbo that exists pass the threshold of unspeakable pain.
"Sirens Nocturne" is a heart- breaking opener indeed, an introduction that feels like crossing the twilight into Darkher's tenebrous domains, and it effectively builds the proper ambience for the rest of the album to unfold, with “Lowly Weep” being the first to creep on those very first moments of heavy doom, reminiscent of Darkher’s first full length. I can't help to hear her multi-layered vocals like the burning ache of those women and children robbed of innocence, brutalized, wounded to the very soul by the inhuman savagery of these worthless scum. As much bliss her music brings to my ears after six years of waiting, it also manages to awaken my most hidden woes.
I don't think Maiven had all of this in mind when writing the material contained on this second album. Nobody could have imagined this. But I'm constantly in awe at how some of the album's titles line-up with the themes I've presented above: "Where The Devil Waits", "Love's Sudden Death”, “Lowly Weep”... The moment I heard her voice singing the album’s first notes, something fell on me making this connection unwillingly, and I want this to be clear: This interpretation of the album’s theme is exclusively mine and not manifested by the artist in any shape or form. In fact, Darkher's music has strong connections with the landscape and the natural world, the hidden forces, the heavy sorrows of the heart. Her music videos clearly portrait this. Winter landscapes and ghostly figures create the proper setting for her sound, an atmosphere that fans of other artists like Chelsea Wolfe or Emily Jane White will be very familiar with.
So, as a faithful fanatic of Darkher myself, I should be exultant to have this second album wrapping me up like a veil of soft cotton, but instead, I feel like I’m sinking into a pit of dark matter.
The Buried Storm sounds and feels like a requiem, a funeral for the tortured. When you have women drenched in blood protesting in front of the Russian embassy in Tallinn against these criminals and Russia's answer is a comedian’s meme with the words "is that period blood?" I can't help to shudder in fear of what these people has become under the ceaseless fire of lies and propaganda. It just hurts immensely. "Immortals", the one song before the last, it's Darkher at her best, it literally broke me as I was flailing myself through the news this morning. It reigns over an album that has significantly cut down the metal in favor of richer folk sections and somber new age passages where Maiven's voice finds the space to unfurl like miasma over the sands of time.
While the album closer "Fear Not, My King" is nothing short of an excellent tune, I am confident in saying that "Immortals" would have sealed
The Buried Storm better. Where this song sort of invites to respite, the actual closer includes some kind of howling that sounds, interestingly enough, like air raid sirens, and it drags the album out with loathsome tempo through the mud of its last mournful notes, burying it deep down the back of your memory.
In my case, I know I will be unearthing this storm for months to come, it’s simply a great album and if you have been like me, eager for more Darkher, know that you’ll be generously rewarded for your patience. While this wait is over, a new one begins, because I long for the day I see punishment and justice befall on those brave enough to rape an octogenarian lady in her home while beating her husband, those whose lives are not even worth a bullet, and whose spirits I hope they burn in perpetual torment forever. This is the storm I will be trying to bury for a long time and bless the gods I’ll have the help of an album like this one to aid me.
