_________________________________________________________________________ | . . | . | . | . | . | | . | . | , | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ` | ' | | | ' | | ` | ' | ' | ___|___|___|___|_______|_______|___|___|_______|___|_______|_______|_______|___ \______________________________________|______________________________________/ / \ | Artist..: Yfel | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | Album...: Beneath the Mountain's Vigil | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | Genre...: Black Metal | Label...: Fiadh Productions | | Year....: 2023 | | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | R.date..: 2023-12-21 | S.date..: 2023-12-22 | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | Source..: WEB (24bit) | Encoder.: libFLAC | | Bitrate.: 1751kbps avg. | F.Rate..: 44.1kHz | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | http://play.qobuz.com/album/abcok13p8ni1b | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | Disc 1 / 1 | | -------- | | | | 01. All Fleas Carry the Souls of Men 8:40 | | 02. Battle of Blair Mountain 10:04 | | 03. Protectors of the Tomb 6:30 | | 04. The Father's Path 7:24 | | 05. Eyes of the Moon 7:47 | | | | | | --------------------- | | (531.14MB) 00:40:25 | >-----------------------------------------------------------------------------< | One of my favorite movies of all time is Matewan, the 1987 historical | | drama directed by John Sayles. The film depicts the struggle of the coal | | miners of Matewan, West Virginia as they form a union, go on strike, and | | ultimately take up arms against the brutal tactics and hired goons of the | | Stone Mountain Coal Company. The cast list is a who’s who of great | | character actors: Chris Cooper in his first screen role, David Strathairn, | | James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Kevin Tighe, a teenaged Will Oldham. The | | legendary Haskell Wexler’s cinematography was never better, and Sayles’ | | sharp-edged, leftist politics are front and center in every scene. Matewan | | is also a great music film, with a dobro-heavy score by Mason Daring and | | four songs by Hazel Dickens, the West Virginia bluegrass singer whose | | protest songs made her a folk-world star in the ’60s and ’70s. | | Dickens’ presence in Matewan isn’t a hollow gesture. Sayles is explicitly | | invoking and adding to the age-old history of music in social movements, | | especially labor movements. A decade before Matewan, Dickens contributed | | music to Barbara Kopple’s searing coal-country documentary, Harlan County | | USA. One of her songs for that film is called “Black Lung,” after the | | disease that killed her brother. The personal, the political, and the | | purely practical all mingle in coal miners’ music, and the Matewan | | soundtrack understands that. Dickens understood that better than anybody. | | Her songs for Matewan, from the defiant “Fire In The Hole” to the | | devastating “Hills Of Galilee,” may technically be film music, but they’re | | also etched into labor history. | | | | On August 25, 1921, barely a year after the events of Matewan, the Battle | | of Blair Mountain broke out in neighboring Logan County, West Virginia. | | Ten thousand union miners marched against a coalition of coal mine | | operators, strikebreakers, and private militiamen. It’s still the largest | | and bloodiest labor uprising in American history, and President Warren G. | | Harding eventually deployed the US Army to West Virginia to quell the last | | flames of insurrection. A little over a century later, Columbus, Ohio’s | | Yfel have immortalized the miners’ struggle in “Battle Of Blair Mountain,” | | a towering, 10-minute firestorm of epic, atmospheric black metal. Hazel | | Dickens probably wouldn’t know what to make of all the blastbeats and | | screaming, but she’d sure as hell be proud of Yfel’s intent. | | | | “Battle Of Blair Mountain” is the highlight of Beneath The Mountain’s | | Vigil, Yfel’s first full-length, and it functions like an old union song. | | Its lyrics, written by guitarist Ryan Atkins, are bracingly direct and | | unburdened by metaphorical language. (There’s even a direct reference to | | Matewan.) In true labor-anthem fashion, it calls back to an old event to | | help illuminate a way into an uncertain future. The fist of corporate | | greed that came down on the Blair Mountain miners is still coming down on | | Amazon warehouse workers and Starbucks baristas. You can almost hear the | | song’s final verse being chanted on a picket line: “Together we stand | | united and strong/ Against those who would do us wrong.” | | | | Atkins lives in Columbus now, but he grew up in rural Ohio just across the | | West Virginia border, and coal mining runs in his family. Beneath The | | Mountain’s Vigil is consequently fixated on coal as a lyrical subject. | | Beyond “Blair Mountain,” there’s “Protectors Of The Tomb,” a song about | | the companies who have tried to blow up old mountaintop cemeteries to get | | at the coal underneath them. Coal put a lot of the men in those cemeteries | | in their graves in the first place; for the captains of industry, that | | apparently wasn’t enough. “The Father’s Path” is a devastating song about | | the younger generation of miners making what feels like the only choice | | available to them: “Sent into the caverns/ One thousand feet below/ It’s | | what we know.” | | | | Yfel started in 2021 as an offshoot of the melodic death metal band Gates | | To The Abyss, but they don’t sound anything like them. Early in the | | pandemic, Atkins, co-guitarist Drew Staggs, and drummer Chaz Frazer | | started coming up with ideas that seemed to stretch beyond the scope of | | Gates. They found themselves writing parts that were less about individual | | riffs and more about creating an outsize atmosphere. Songs started getting | | longer. The new music seemed to demand a new, more serious lyrical focus – | | Gates had been a Lord Of The Rings-themed band – and the idea of exploited | | labor and land in Appalachia soon emerged. Yfel’s self-produced debut EP, | | 2021’s Personification Of Chaos, was a promising opening salvo that hinted | | at the ideas that now appear fully formed on Beneath The Mountain’s Vigil. | | | | Atmospheric black metal is all about the sense of scale. If you want to | | get deep into the subgenre weeds, that sense of scale is what separates it | | from what’s become known as blackgaze. There’s a certain emotional | | intimacy to Alcest, Deafheaven, and bands that have followed in their | | wake. That’s not what Yfel are about. Their songs are mountains scraping | | the heavens. The five tracks on Beneath The Mountain’s Vigil average eight | | minutes apiece, and Yfel use that time to build out musical suites that | | feel truly enormous. The emotions of the album aren’t dialed into | | one-on-one connection; they’re about their own sheer immensity. There’s a | | risk of chilly remoteness to that approach, and lesser atmospheric bands | | end up making black metal wallpaper. Yfel have already figured out how to | | avoid that trap. As huge as Beneath The Mountain’s Vigil feels, its focus | | on coal country lends it a specificity that helps drive the songs home. | | | | Yfel don’t venture too far outside of the tried-and-true formula for this | | style of music. They don’t really need to. The tremolo-picked riffs, | | mournful melodies, acoustic breaks, wind-tunnel drumming, and throaty | | howls of classic black metal suit their purposes well. Within the confines | | of that style, they find frequent opportunities for ecstatic expression. | | One such moment is the acoustic guitar line on “All Fleas Carry The Souls | | Of Men” that arrives to escort the icy main riff out of the song. | | (Darkthrone pull off a similar move on “In The Shadow Of The Horns,” | | possibly the greatest black metal song of all time, and that passage on | | “Fleas” feels like a deliberate nod.) Later, on “The Father’s Path,” a | | clean vocal part cuts through the haze of riffs, reorienting the song | | around its doleful melody. Chaz Frazer, the album’s quiet MVP, peppers his | | blasting drum patterns with lively fills that keep the band on their toes. | | Beneath The Mountain’s Vigil’s songs are all long and true to genre, but | | they’re not monolithic or, heaven forbid, boring. | | | | The epic sound works to reinforce the album’s strong thematic center. Yfel | | make the struggle of the coal miner – and the laborer, more generally – | | sound like the most urgent, important fight in the world. Black metal is a | | powerful sound that’s been co-opted by plenty of knuckleheads over the | | years. Beneath The Mountain’s Vigil refuses to be apolitical (or worse). | | Instead, it’s an urgent rallying cry for what Yfel’s kindred spirits in | | Ashenspire would call “the Great Many.” Fans of Panopticon’s 2012 | | bluegrass-and-black-metal masterpiece Kentucky will likely hear echoes of | | that album in what Yfel are doing here. (Vigil was mixed and mastered by | | Spenser Morris, who has been Panopticon’s go-to engineer for years.) Both | | albums use the vast scale of atmospheric black metal to revive the | | union-song tradition and shine a light on the oft-forgotten plight of the | | coal miner. But the line goes back to Hazel Dickens, and to Woody Guthrie | | before her, and even further back, to any working person who has ever sung | | out for what they deserve. What Yfel achieve on Beneath The Mountain’s | | Vigil isn’t new. It’s merely the latest chapter in an ancient, hallowed | | tradition. | \_____________________________________________________________________________/ ixxu!imp