Skip to main content

Kintsukuroi (金繕い) - Ode to Loneliness and Sorrow

 

Kintsukuroi (金繕い) are back with a full length album. 

When I last talked about them, they had released a single I was pretty smitten with. Now, mere months later, we have a new full-length to dig into.

They introduce the album this way:

"A burning pyre made of yellowing post cards and forgotten memories, standing beside it while witnessing how negative emotions dissipated as the wind swept the ashes away --- the ultimate indulging of loneliness in the black box you created for yourself. A poetry of depressive romance: this is how one would describe the music of Kinsukuroi.

Based in Italy, Solitude Project used to be a solid dbm project. The duo changed their name into Kinsukuroi (金繕い/Golden Repair) in 2020 and have released an ep consisted of two songs that best exemplified their own musical aesthetic of post black metal's melancholy nature. In collaboration with Pest Productions, Kinsukuroi will release this ep and gave it a new title: Ode to Loneliness and Sorrow, an ep consisted of those two songs originally included in the previous ep, plus 1 new song and 4 songs brilliantly covering some major acts in post black metal and neofolk. Those covers, together with those two songs written by Kinsukuroi themselves, clearly demonstrate the project's potential: as flooding riffs and melodies of sorrow intertwining with the bleak and dreamlike ambient soundscape created by synths and keyboards, the razor-sharp deep howls bring the listeners into the inner world of Kinsukuroi: a great mixture of depressive rock and post black metal, a world of suicidal beauty." 

So, not a traditional full-length.Three songs from them, three well-made covers, and instrumental versions of all of the material. Like I said in my earlier review, the instrumental versions are, for me, stronger.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Agriculture - Agriculture

  a   While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide.  That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

 The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that. Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial . Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own. Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. ...

Valais - Valais

  I love the pathological hatred of self-promotion that defines a lot of underground black metal, but it sure does make it hard to write about new bands some times. I know absolutely nothing about this band other than that they are from Dublin Ireland, and they  play the sort of goblin vocal, snare heavy ritual occult black metal I like to listen to in those rare moments where I have the house to myself. Three main songs, with two shorter interludes, identified by roman numerals and nothing else. The interludes are piano and acoustic guitar bits that add a deeper dimension to what might otherwise be too much onslaught of 90mph diabolism. I personally am pretty into this as an End of Year List candidate. Definitely one of the best albums I've heard in May. Valais by Valais