The output of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk (Toroidh, MZ412, Korperwelten, Folkstorm, etc.) has become so insanely prolific that I've given up trying to keep track of all of the different projects he's involved in. Whenever something new comes down the pike from his noize-injected black metal alter ego Vargr or the black industrial ambience that he creates under the Nordvargr name, I'm usually on top of it, but I didn't find out about this particular project until a good five months after the damn thing had been released. This guy is an unending fountain of black atmospheric music.
The music that's featured on the debut cd from All Hail The Transcending Ghost has been in the works for a while. The liners mention that this was recorded between 2004 and 2007, a collaboration between Nordvargr and guitarist Tim Bertilsson that engaged in on-again, off-again recording sessions that eventually birthed these seven tracks. Bertilsson is probably better known to some as the drummer for the Swedish instrumental metal band Switchblade, who released a couple of excellent albums on Deathwish and Cyclops Media a few years ago, though he has also appeared recently as a drummer for the guitar drone project Fear Falls Burning on their Frenzy Of The Absolute album from last year. As All Hail The Transcending Ghost, the two musicians create a series of restrained industrial dronescapes that might surprise some with how subdued and ambient this is compared to other recent Nordvargr related releases... the first few tracks especially are haunting driftscapes that never peak into full on aggression, but instead carefully layer soft post-rock guitar strum and minor key melodies across black oceans of machine whir and ambient drone, endless metallic shimmer and far-off factory rumblings, bits of backwards melody and traces of chanting vocals swirling in the murky dark dronescapes. The first three tracks all remind me of a much more muted and droneological version of the dark kosmiche/post-rock/blackdrone of Locrian, but the fourth track heralds a more caustic shift with deep electronic belches, Nordvargr's gutteral mumbling vocals, and glitchy noise that fully takes shape with the crushing industrial clamor of the following track. Here, dissonant guitar clang echoes across bursts of electronic blackfire that pan from speaker to speaker, erupting into a blown-out noisedirge rife with shrieking tortured vocals, like a Neurosis guitar riff ripped away from the rest of the band and left to drift over an abyss of corrosive blackdrone. The last two tracks return to the more droning, ambient end of the band's sound, but still feature swells of ominous ambient riffage and abrasive guitar noise that lurks just below the surface of their distorted dronescapes. It's a strange but effective mix of black ambience, cold droning industrial, and metallic guitar sludge, sort of like a blackened industrial version of Fear Falls Burning at times. Another winner from Nordvargr, for sure.