It’s been half a decade since we last heard from Norwegian black metal adventurers Dødsengel, but that doesn’t mean the duo of drummer Malach Adonai and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Kark haven’t been busy. Ever the creators, Bab Al On, the followup to 2017’s Interequinox, is as dense and conceptual as the group’s most intense works. Featuring thick, near psychedelic songwriting and hellish vocal work, Dødsengel in 2022 comport themselves as something gilded, but tarnished – an exercise in damaged beauty and crooked grace. At the same time, Dødsengel are a black metal band, so expect some standard fare, but the blast beats are transmuted and the shrieks are all the more deranged. Listen to “In the Heart of the World” below.
From the artists:
This song started out being based on more or less a single melody I had written quite some time ago as a somewhat abstract idea, but still with a graspable direction and feel to it. The structural skeleton of the song gradually got clad in flesh with time, where bits and pieces fell into place with swanlike elegance. The song`s climax is one of our heaviest ever, in every aspect.
–Kark
In my tradition, we have an idea of the Angel or Daimon, a representative of your True Will and inmost being. I felt like I had lost myself in life, and endured months and months of dry spells and tedious gray dull despair. Then, absurdly, I had a moment where I relived an experience of unity with that luminous being. Seemingly for no reason at all, everything was right, and I was bursting with energy, creativity, and presence. I tried to express this feeling of experiencing the true will, then getting lost in your own life and gradually losing more and more of that connection, and then, suddenly and absurdly, being there again. I am not sure I succeeded, but I have grown to truly love this song and the dance between Lover and Beloved that it tries to express.
–Malach Adonai
Bab Al On releases December 16th on Debemur Morti Productions.
