Written: 9th October 2024
Last year, Dødheimsgard released one of the best albums of the year in the incredible Black Medium Current. Following this album, a period of creativity inspired by the band’s own Satanic Art and 666 International of the late 1990s, DHG mastermind Yusaf “Vicotnik” Parvez and their guitarist Camille Giradeau found themselves developing a side project – Doedsmaghird – as a warped companion of sorts. In contrast to the meticulous process of producing a Dødheimsgard album, Omniverse Consciousness was driven by instinct: no overthinking, revealing itself through spontaneous chaos.
Opening track Heart of Hell wanders though a landscape of external and internal darkness, exploring themes of identity and the quest for deeper understanding. It begins in a windswept, desolate landscape with ominous overlapping synths, mysterious, distant voices and an unnerving static. Exploding a minute in, the intensity increases with each moment of rapid guitar, beguiling percussion and Vicotnik’s ferocious existential lyrics. Formless infinite / Though long contained / I venture down / The left-hand lane / I wander here / Down every stair / In golden wires / I disappear. Pulsating synths lead us towards the quite exquisite piano (a distinct feature of Black Medium Current) of the song’s finale and gentler vocals that drip with atmosphere, as a mirror to the turmoil earlier in the track.
Sparker Inn Åpne Dører (which translates as Kicking In Open Doors) fully embraces the tumultuous frenzy of the album. Interjectory cries and chants abound as the partly sung, partly growled vocals invade our minds and crushing, rapid riffs stab with furious anger. Unexpectedly, a minute in, the instruments peel back for a few moments as we discover we are walking through a deserted, mechanised landscape. However, the respite is short lived and the punishment returns. This continues on Then, to Darkness Return which attacks with the psychotic bedlam of industrial black metal. Threatening to overwhelm the listener with complex rhythmic structures, riffs and synths that push the limits of overlapping sounds to the precipice, Doedsmaghird just manage to hold on due to the changing rhythms and shorter running time that allow us to keep up just when we think we might plummet to our deaths.
Endless Distance is another foreboding introspective track that tackles the notions of inner turmoil, isolation and the difficulty in finding our way in anarchic, psychological darkness. Rifted featureless in the afterglow / I threw my rivets / Through dreams unmeasurable / Passing virtues of dividing toll / My black holes of inequity / Carved right into my willing soul. Somehow enveloped in a smothering cloud, the opening riffs are muted and disturbing. Suddenly, vibrant synths dance in the background in unsettling juxtaposition with the jarring riffs and vocals. There is a combination of the primal and the otherworldly running through the heart of Omniverse Consciousness and listeners will find the result either intoxicating or unlistenable.
In a moment that allows us to catch our breath and wondering just where we find ourselves now, the two-minute piano-led Endeavour steps gingerly into a frostbitten wasteland of solitude. Serving as an icy bridge between the brutal worlds of Endless Distance and Death of Time, Endeavour is perfectly positioned as we embrace the cacophony once again. Following its entropic opening, Death of Time slows in tempo a little, maintaining its stormy heart but allowing some melody to briefly bloom via the accompanying guitar. Doedsmaghird have completely thrown away the rule book for Omniverse Consciousness with songs following no fixed structure, twisting and weaving with agonised stomps one moment and providing glimmers of light with arpeggiated keyboards and deep throbbing synths the next, a feature of seventh track Min Tid Er Omme (translated as My Time Is Up).
Adrift In Collapse is the most varied track on the album with Doedsmaghird throwing everything they have to offer into the mix. With bagpipe type sounds, tremolo riffs, hypnotic keyboards, howling, pained vocals and a hurricanic pace eventually resolving themselves into reflective moments of classical inspired majesty, there simply is no limits to what the band are prepared to do. A reflection of a confused and remorseless society, the sombre imagery is one of inexorable descent, a dive into an abyss of disillusionment and the haunting phantom of generational decay. Wrought dreams / Of dim black conviction / Your centre cannot withhold / When belief falls apart / Of cold bleak effluence / Into shapes of oblivion. A riveting and chthonic experience as much as a song, it belies genre classification. Ending the album with another short piano-based piece – Requiem Transiens – it appears that the band have left us alone to reflect on the time that we have passed with them while the portentous, spectral aura of menace lingers until last notes die away.
Across its nine songs, Omniverse Consciousness - which combines black metal, industrial metal, the avant-garde and the experimental - revolves around seizing Doedsmaghird’s fervent instances of impulse and distilling them into an untamed wellspring. The album unfolds as an odyssey through relentless gloom, with lyrics evoked and presented as a series of vivid and potent vignettes and shadowy ruminations. This is not an album that gives itself up easily; you need to work for it. Like the cursed, tormented child of Black Medium Current, 666 International, Satanic Art and A Umbra Omega, Omniverse Consciousness is an unfiltered, visceral and surreal pilgrimage across a grotesque vista. However, you might just be surprised by how much it can burrow under your skin – and stay there - given the opportunity. Bewitchingly sinister, it has the power to both terrify and enthral.
Omniverse Consciousness is released on 11th October 2024
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