KISS THE
ANUS OF A BLACK CAT – when they believed in nebulous dreams
(CD/LP,
conspiracy)
Not for the faint of heart, the third installment of
enigmatic drone heretics Kiss the anus of a black cat, demands a lot from
its listeners. Like being able to hold your breath for ten minutes. Or to
have the dilligence and patience to find all the little dynamics and
textures in a big wall. Or to face mysterious lyrics head on and try to
understand them rather by not listening than by deciphering. It all seems
very straightforward, solid and compact at first, but it is unimaginably
complex and ephemeral once you try to touch it. The mixture of minimalism,
drone and wall of sound on the one side with the dynamic tectonics, modal
shifts and especially the in more than one way estranging lyrics, makes
“when they believed in nebulous dreams” very much an experience that is
describet the best just this way: a nebulous dream but the kind you strictly
believe you are awake while dreaming.
The music is like a big, solid machine back from a time
when there were no machines. And it sits just this way between the ages and
musical genres, like either a beacon for disrupted times to come or like a
remnant of something that has never been. It is a big, epic, dark wall of
medieval rock, that at any point seems completely static and unchanging, yet
moves from one point to the next without hesitation. Late at night listening
that makes you feel all lonely and lost while you see invisible demonic
paramilitary troops roam the streets in front of your window. The flashes of
light in the window opposite yours seem more like gunshots than photography.
Then you start to question everything, any moral and taboo, any security in
live, any dream or fear. Until you find the place that nihilism came from.
The rhythms are like heavily pounding machinery, a steel mill or a brigade
of soldiers, and it won’t ever stop for any merely mortal cause. The
spiral on the cover is the perfect vision for the musical effect, an
endless, tranceinducing pit.
After starting with a disordant bout of droning
screeches for a couple of minutes, the album starts with the epic “between
skylla and charybdis” with a booming bass and drum pattern that moves
along for another couple of minutes. As a listener, you have either been
drawn into the pit of visceral, mean sounds, or you won’t ever get in. The
moment the vocal set in, in the tonality and singing style set as
idiosyncratic by David Tibet some years ago, it will be safe haven for some,
and new shore for others.
Lyricwise the coven of Kiss the anus of a Black Cat
takes us back to a time better described by the fantasies and illusions of
people with an inclination towards all things magick and medieval than
history textbooks. The air fills with symbols like crowns, ghouls, wandering
jews, bleeding children and black rays, and always the rain falling down.
Finally the world will fall. You may also take these words as a great
metaphor for our current times rather than the dark ages of some centuries
ago, because in a lot of ways our times are just as miserable and cruel as
the twelfth century and its slavery, crusades and torture, but today we call
it consumerism, racism and private television with our religion called
globalization. Well, I do believe it at times myself, but listening to this
record makes me change my beliefs in just three songs. And those take some
over thirty minutes, so that might give you a better picture of this album.
What I miss sometimes is the uplifting and enlightening
part of this kind of darkness. For example, Robert Frost, is bitter, cold
and dark as well, but finally he leaves you with a spirit that is a little
higher than before. Same goes for Alexander Tucker or the relentless booming noise
of Nadja, but
then again this thing here comes from a way different place. Kiss the anus
of a black cat dwell completely in the downsides and the nihilism of their
vision. But it is a unique and fascinating vision, to say the least, and the
realization sucks you into its vortex of despair and black fear with
uncomparable ease. And at other times, this is the best thing to happen to
you to set you straight in a definitely skewed world.
