Over the past few years, there have been some really incredible mutations sprouting out of the cracked floorboards of the deep underground black metal scene that have flirted with, and in some cases fully assimilated into it's own DNA, the gorgeous wall-of-sound bliss of early 90's shoegazer rock and dreamy post-rock. That awesome LURKER OF CHALICE album springs immediately to mind, with it's heavy MBV style melodic wash and creepy post-punk-isms, and AGALLOCH has also formed some truly amazing sounds that bridge the frosty, blackened rasp of black metal with beautiful, hazy shoegaze. LEVIATHAN, WIGRID, and WOLD have all also infused their isolationist black metal with similiarly woozy, smeared melodic textures. I definitely can't enough of this sort of stuff. Enter CAINA from the UK, whose debut album Some People Fall not only looks like an early 90's 4AD Records release with it's high contrast moth artwork, a gothy photo of sole member A., and lots of gloomy downer lyrics, but also weaves some seriously beautiful and epic shoegazey post-rock a la ELUVIUM and MONO into ragged and chaotic eruptions of low-fi outsider black metal. CAINA is a one-dude unit in the vein of USBM outfits DRAUGAR, LEVIATHAN, and XASTHUR, and the black metal passages are extremely frenzied, blurry blasts that remind me a bit of LEVIATHAN and XASTHUR, but with deeper, more death metallish vocals, and some fucked up, wobbly drumming that makes this even more hallucinogenic and dreamlike.
The album opens with the gorgeous instrumental "Some People Fall", which wraps a lone tremelo picked guitar melody in sheets of sad feedback, evoking everything from M83 to ELUVIUM's dreamscapes and the sort of understated buildups that MONO traffic in, dipping in and out of valleys of near-silence as stumbling marching drums ascend from below. Very, very beautiful, the sort of shoegazey post rock that you would expect to hear from Temporary Residence draped in gauzy diistortion. This leads into "The Validity Of Hate Within An Emotional Vacuum", which takes a dark turn into ultra lo-fi black metal territory with layers of trebly, ultradistorted guitar fuzz thrashing out bleary minor key melodies, all very reminiscent of both XASTHUR and STRIBORG, with demented, pissed-off vocals pushed WAY up front over blasting, chaotic drumming. "Black End Tyme Collapse" follows with several minutes of chilly isolationist guitar drones that fade into the sounds of children screaming and singing and distant gunshots, which comes off pretty creepy, before CAINA collapses into the nine minute epic "Satanikulturpessimis", which marries another destroyed outsider black metal assault with really weird offtime blastbeats and stumbling confusional grooves and more awesome fuzzy shoegazer melodies floating over the blackthrash carnage. After several minutes of chaotic, fuzzbombed blasting and demented ranting, the song fades into another passage of MONO-esque post-rock beauty as lonely slide guitars glide through veils of e-bow shaped feedback. The fifth track, "Abraxas Gate", is another foray into slow building post rock, a creeping atmospherinc melody drifting slowly into clouds of distorted guitar noise and far-off metallic tones. "The Mother" appears with a surprising turn into depressing dark pop, reminding me a little of Andrew Eldritch or Martin Gore with his dramatic clean singing, but then explodes again into a wash of noisy, droning BM blur with an extremely catchy downer-pop melody layered over it. "Inside The Outside" features more of A's clean, gothy singing over layers of single note e-bowed guitars, as rolling drums appear alongside another glistening MONO-like build. The closing track, "Goetic Shadow Cabaret", is another dark field of ambient drone, casting it's black shadow briefly before coming to a sudden end. CAINA's alchemical, artsy black metal is out there enough that it will probably turn off fans expecting a more grim, straightforward assault, but fans of post-BM abstraction, damaged black metal weirdness, and heavier, more disruptive shapes of modern post rock should check this out.