Chiral is the name of a very young one-man band, but despite the very young age (the project began in early 2014), there were quite some releases in mean time (demos, singles and two splits). Amongst those, a demo called Abisso…
Earlier this year, Chiral signed to Black Plague Records in order to release the full length Nightsky, but in an unholy marriage with Metallic Media and Satanath’s sub-label Symbol Of Domination Productions (both of them do work together very intensively), Black Plague bring out the album Abisso, which consists of the original tracks from the demo, and a new one.
The journey starts with Atto I: Desceso Nel Buio, which opens with the ominous sound of wind and thunder. After half a minute, a floaty and melancholic keyboard line penetrates the stormy sphere, shortly after joined by a mostly funereal and depressive Funeral / Suicidal Black attitude: slow rhythms and riffs and desolate acoustics, and then a melancholic lead riff. After about three minutes, also hollow, distant, grim voices join in, making this track a mostly haunting and atmospheric DSBM-alike opener. Totally different, however, is the next piece, Atto I: Oblio, which initially (and immediately) brings back the nastiness of the very early nineties’ scene: fast and epic thrashing rhythms, hateful vocals and Nordic-styled leads! Suddenly the song gets injected by a dreamy part based on acoustic guitars, little progressive and post-modernistic, before getting back to the raw violence of the first minute of this song. This way the track continues, towards the end getting injected by an almost hypnotic tremolo lead and some spherical keyboards. Atto II: Abisso (which lasts for almost twelve minutes) opens with piano and acoustic guitars, soon joined by clean electric guitar leads and epic-distant synths, before turning into another fast blackened outburst. Here the drum patterns might bother some, but there is much more positive to focus on, such as the permanence of changes in tempo, melody and structure. The song has some slower, utterly obscure moments, being a nice counterbalance to the quasi mechanic blast-eruptions. The song builds up, stronger and stronger, with those great Sulphur-laden screams, fabulous Dissection-alike leads and haunting synths, before ending with another acoustic outro. Atto II: In Assenza is a short outro, opening the acoustic way, ending with a distant noise of wind once again, like the very beginning. The fifth piece is Atto Finale: Di Notte, Cielo E Solitudine, thirteen minutes of length, and quite comparable to material in the vein of Lustre, if you want to, with hints of Summoning or Radogor. Despite its length, this piece is more repetitive and less adventurous than the former ones (no fast-paced outbursts, for example), yet with an atmosphere even more suffocating and cold. Abisso ends with a re-recorded version of the black-banger Death’s Dominion, which surely is a mostly morbid and aggressive piece of blackness, yet rather ‘traditional’ (but who cares?).