Locrian & Mamiffer: "In Fulminic Blaze"

Peeling like the yawn of a springtime black bear ringing through the hollow trunk of a mossy log, the opening chapter of the recent collaboration between Chicago metal alchemists Locrian and perennial black monks Aaron Turner and Faith Coloccia, better known together as Mamiffer, seems more than appropriate as Pan’s bullhorn call to the waking crust of dead winter. The bands have discussed running themes of electricity throughout Bless Them That Curse You and how it relates to the proverbial spark of life, and as Coloccia explains regarding the lightning imagery, of the “evidence of sky and earth ‘mating’.” Creaking under the weight of a piano’s corpse rising slowly into a second skin, “In Fulminic Blaze” feels as much about the stirrings of new life, rising from the electrical jolts of every struck note, as it does about the ashes left behind by the flames in the Phoenix’s wake.

Considering the players at work, there’s no question why “In Fulminic Blaze” comes off convincingly as a sort of funeral march for Death itself. Aaron Turner proves himself once again to be modern metal’s finest secret agent, as his compositional talents have lent weight to more projects than I can count, without ever coming across as vain or coat-tailing on reputation-based hype, and the truly zygotic success of this honest team effort is no exception. Operatic in scope but as subtle as a leafy creeper, it methodically swirls together a pungent biological soup of plodding gobs of piano as they coalesce into a monolithic wave of rushing noise, and even before the dramatic finale bursts through its confining membrane, all of the hands at work have come together in well-measured strokes.

Drenched in the season’s cold, earthy melt, “In Fulminic Blaze” presents a compelling introduction to a well-timed collaboration by two deserved groups that can only do well by joining forces to excavate new contexts in heavy music. There’s certainly a lot of dead detritus and year-old bark to scrape through, but that Swamp Thing feeling of something bubbling slowly to birth through the blackness is ever-present and creepily mesmerizing in the spirit of both bands’ finest works. And luckily, it’s only a good reminder for me to get the last of my vegetables down. In the spring of 2012, gardening is officially kvlt.