筮人 (CN) - 苦棘
Digital download
https://pestproductions.bandcamp.com/album/--21
荒诞纠缠
困厄乱语
被映照的枯相
汇入第七个宙梦
Ruts of night, of trajectories too frail to resemble forms of flights, unravel as brushstrokes not yet capable of forming words, etching like Breathes the Departed left and will forever do, onto this Exact Moment -- this Bleak Season. Affliction, Absence, Abstinence from Reasons -- the Skyline beyond this darkness you see, while almost reachable, wilting away in your gaze. But you are here. Praying into, this Stillness of your Soul. Bitterness bites -- your lips, your flesh, tastes of an Ending Approaching, or is it but another Cycle? From one Husk to another -- Birth and Rebirth, equally forgotten. Unmoving yet free, between your wounded minds and the promising Light, an umbilical cord of thorns entangled into the Beyond -- more frail than ever in this Jarring Delirium -- luring your senses into the next Husk, the Last Turning -- one step closer to the Firmament and Its Infinity. Seize it.
Almost one year after 度亡 -- one exquisitely conjured Rite of Bardo -- 筮人 presented to the underground yet another unique offering. Hermetic and ruminative as ever, yet obtaining a desolation reminiscent of a Windswept Wilds, 苦棘 shifts the artistic expression to the suffocating storm of Ambient Black Metal -- of the ferocious sort. In here, the listeners will behold a rare case where the soundscape captures both a Vile sense of Stagnation and an Evanescent Draft of the Unknown: stingy, choked, forever in one place, while your imagination runs amok. 筮人 takes the atmosphere of an overwhelming siege made prominent by legends like Paysage d’Hiver, and threads it perfectly with strings and synths rooted in Eastern aesthetics -- at times, this feels like a lost record from the Chinese BM scene back in the 2000s. For those fans who adore such somber nostalgia, 苦棘 will be a gem you shouldn’t miss.