Under the moniker of Scorpio V, the Serbian guy Alexander runs a truly interesting number of outfits. He’s the guy behind the Prometheus Studio organization (which is ‘dedicated in delivering immersive musical narratives’), which releases (self-made) material by obscure and border-trespassing projects like Monasterium Imperi and Paleowolf, or the likes of Gaetir The Mountainkeeper, Forest Of Yore, Stronghold Guardian and several more.
Scorpio V is also the spiritual guide behind Metatron Omega. For some reason (but hey, you won’t hear me complaining about this), this solo-outfit is not directly related to Prometheus Studio, yet part of the mighty Cryo Chamber family. And purely informative: Metatron Omega indeed has been part of the unique Cryo Chamber Collaboration as well.
With ISIH, Metatron Omega offers its fifth contribution to the dark-minded audience via that superb Oregon-based Ambient-label (run by Simon Heath of Sabled Sun / Atrium Carceri fame, by the way) (FYI: after Gnosis Dei, Sanctum, Illuminatio, and Evangelikon). Like before, everything was written, performed and produced by Scorpio V himself, while the mastering duties were taken care of by the label-owner Simon. And before focusing on the aural content, I have to mention the deeply-stunning (cover) artwork, courtesy of the artist himself once more. Mystique, mystery, sacrality, capriciousness and obscurity are canalised through such precious visual representation, and it does fit to the aural content for sure! It does ‘reveal’ something that might follow sonically, and so does the album’s title (once again).
ISIH goes on in the vein of the former material, where Evangelikon paved (or is it: continued) that magisterial path of esoteric, introspective and sort of devotional Ambient. The base-structures are created around hypnotic drones and floating keyboard-lines, at the same time meditative and contemplative. It’s like an illuminated desert-like surface that carries forth a spiritual consciousness. The latter gets expressed through ethereal and / or Gregorian choir-chants, tribal percussions and penetrating synth-melodies, and a modest amount on additional sounds, voices and field-recorded (I think) elements. That in a nutshell.
About each single ‘song’ on this album (it is almost insulting to call these hymnic pieces a ‘song’) is part of a larger story, of a philosophical message, narrating about mankind’s existence and its essential truth within a wider universal and ethereal context, searching for the True Being within an unphysical vastness that trespasses and, at the same time, surrounds our raison d’être; a quest through the Darkness and towards the true Light…
Once again, like it is the case with the former Metatron Omega recordings, ISIH cannot be seen as a collection of tracks. ISIH is one soundtrack, okay, divided into different chapters, yet to be considered one story of revelation and perception. Like an adventurous journey, here too the different fragments and divisions balance towards rather obscure sageness (cf. the more vigorous excerpts, for example when accompanied by those soft-pulsating, martial drum-patterns, these obscure, horrific reverberating voice-like echoes, and the rumbling waves of noise), then again towards enlightening introspection (the nebula-covered parts of mesmerizing soundscapes and chimerical ambience, or when joined by the intoxicating monastery-chants). There is a perfected balance in between these ‘extremes’, as well as an organic coalescing.
Somehow bleakness and opulence, a down-earthed mentality versus a ritualistic and semi-levitating ceremony, enfin, it’s full of contrasts beneath the surface, which will reveal themselves after each new listening experience.
What was in the Beginning, thus shall it be in the End…
Available the digital way, as well as on compact-disc, i.e. a six-panel digipack with, as mentioned above, breath-taking visual artwork. Total running time: about fifty-eight minutes.
https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/album/isih
https://prometheusstudio.bandcamp.com/
https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/album/nyarlathotep