Future's Shadow
“Bass solo, take one.”
In 1983 Metallica’s debut album Kill ‘Em All erupted into the world merging heavy metal swagger with punked-up aggression, unleashing several thrash metal anthems and beginning a career that would result in some of the most famous and critically-acclaimed metal records of all time.
Fusing Classical melodicism with clenched-fist power, Cliff Burton brought a charged, pounding, low-end to Metallica’s youthful ‘pile the riffs up high’ early compositions. It was Kill ‘Em All’s instrumental track (Anesthesia) - Pulling Teeth, however, that hinted at the direction Metallica would take on later records, with Burton playing a baroque, Bach-esque unfurling melody which soon unravels into a scrawled, wah pedal-screeching bass and drums jam.
Burton’s Classically-influenced approach to songcraft and bass-playing refined Metallica’s ability to write epics (where would metal be if The Call of Ktulu or Orion were never written?) that would make up their next 3 records, honing their ability to craft songs rich with an aura of ‘melancholic triumph’ that still resonates and influences to this day.
40 years since Kill ‘Em All, Bell Witch’s The Clandestine Gate (Full title: Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate) takes the melodic ley lines Cliff Burton first brought to light and expands and develops them into fully expansive landscapes. The Clandestine Gate is an 83 minute single-track record awash with the melancholy, rumination and reflection of troubled times. It is my favourite album of 2023 and the most emotionally-cathartic metal record I’ve heard in several years.
Hailing from the misty and rain-drenched Pacific Northwest, Bell Witch are a duo consisting of bassist Dylan Desmond and drummer Jesse Shreibman. They’ve released several albums of crushingly heavy Funeral Doom, with The Clandestine Gate being the first in a trilogy of new records. Using layers of distorted bass and cascading drums to create a particularly mournful form of metal, previous records, although excellent, could sometimes overuse their knack of layered, repeating riffs for long periods of time.
Where The Clandestine Gate feels different to those previous records is in its sense of restraint. A full composition, 83 minutes and 15 seconds in length, this is not a ‘song’ or just a series of repeated riffs but a full movement. It commands you to pay attention and absorb it, almost in complete contrast to how we tend to listen to music these days in more distracted, staccato ways, viewing records as ‘content’ to be consumed as opposed to actual albums to be consumed by.
Repetition is still an important part of their musical discipline & craft, but like everything on this record it has been refined and honed to a keen edge. Repetition now feels like it’s being used to convey a particular emotive expression rather than just the result of a particular musical technique or limitation. One that embodies feeling rather than analysis.
The sparseness of the album is enriched with the increased prominence of organ samples and ambient textures, and it’s here that I feel Bell Witch have really conjured a ‘third instrument’ that compliments their sound perfectly and makes their material even more emotive. There is an undercurrent of shimmering haze and murmuring organ throughout the record that feels both comforting and unnerving.
In terms of pacing and dynamics, Desmond and Shreibman play with a sophistication and sense of intuition that shows the full range of their musicianship . The slight cliché of ‘the quiet sections have never been more austere and the heavy parts have never been been heavier’ (or even more simply, ‘less is more’) feels apt, but it’s also in their particular approach to heaviness this time round, with a forbearance to when they choose to unleash the really heart-breaking melodies that makes this album so affecting. There is a sense of ineffable presence here that I don’t get from many heavy bands, it feels eminently human.
Having said that, several patient listens are required, it was only by the tenth that I started to fully connect with this record. It feels appropriate to be writing this as the leaves have turned for the Autumn, with over six months to really digest and inhabit the landscape Bell Witch have created. Its pacing seems to match perfectly with my footsteps around the woodlands and alongside the river Mersey near my home.
If you are at all a fan of Asunder, later Corrupted, Warning or Mournful Congregation, as well as the minimalist organ work of Kali Malone and Sarah Davachi, you will absolutely love this. The worlds of Doom and Ambient exist fully symbiotically here and it’s an album that is rich in atmosphere and melancholy.
Melancholy has of course been an intrinsic part of Doom since its inception as a genre but I feel there’s sometimes a deeper undercurrent that particular artists or bands can tap into. I adore the likes of the first Ulver albums, or Katatonia’s Dance of December Souls, but those records convey a bit more of the restless angst of youth (as is appropriate for records written and recorded by teenagers!), whereas for me to connect with heavy material now it has to really strike something within and reflect a broader life experience.
The Clandestine Gate’s sense of weight is what makes it so compelling. My own personal experience of depression is one I’ve always felt was imbued with this sense of weight, both physical and mental, and having an audio landscape to fully subsume in has made this record feel very personal. Its expansive opening 20 minutes, including the gorgeous ethereal vocals rising like brume on an overcast dismal day, can give the impression that the whole album will be awash with pining or longing, but this is not quite the case as it shifts into something much deeper and subconscious.
As the record continues, disquieting bass-notes meld with unsettling ambient electronics, and this is where it really evokes what depression actually feels like. Not just the brooding wistfulness of a melancholic disposition but the actual feeling of repeating internal stagnancy, anxiety and disgust with oneself. That sense of self-disgust is only heightened by the guttural, bucolic roars of Shreibman about 40 minutes in, alongside some of the murkiest and densest riffs on the album. The repetition of these riffs continue, holding you as a listener in a sense of stasis - this sort of unending, ploughing fury within that excruciatingly slowly starts to move forward. Just as the sense of suffocation becomes almost total, organ notes and human voice peal out, signalling a sense of calm acceptance of what is to come. From here on Bell Witch unleashes one of the most emotionally-devastating sections of music I’ve heard in years, somehow conveying anger, heartbreak, acceptance, awe and perseverance all at the same time.
To have an album represent those repeating cycles of rumination and hyper fixation, moving from a depressive state step by painful step to emotional catharsis and personal breakthrough, is the embodiment of what I mean when I think of Metal as ‘melancholic triumph’.
A close friend once said that the best Doom records sounds like “To Live Is To Die from ...And Justice for All played at 33rpm”, a description I’ve always loved and is fitting as Burton was credited posthumously for writing Metallica’s most heart-breaking dual-guitar melody.
The Clandestine Gate embodies this credo fully. Everything has its cost, and living is no different. The internal path of self-discovery, of expanding and refining your own sense of self, to lament and accept the parts of yourself that are no longer helping or have changed, is the path everyone must take at some point. It is a lifelong endeavour.
As the ghostly, spectral bassline and hushed cymbal swells of the record’s final minutes echo out to the stars, it’s clear that Bell Witch have created an album that not only fully expresses the weight and pain of living, but also that which makes life so very meaningful.
https://www.bellwitchdoom.net/