The release of the third album by (V.E.G.A.) "Far From You" has been SUSPENDED until further notice in all formats.
ALL OUR 3 ALBUMS ARE AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING ABSOLUTELY FREE AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY
Just scroll down the page under each album cover to let the player pop-up, wait some seconds for the songs to load.
FEEL FREE TO REVIEW OUR MUSIC IF YOU WANT, WE HAVE NO INTEREST IN MAKING PROMOTION BUT WILL ACCEPT ANSWERING INTERVIEWS
All our albums are scheduled for future release on MP3 and CD with professional artwork only on Amazon and iTunes with prices under 10$, through our own label VEGA-KORPORATION
DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS still sells "Cocaine" and "Alienforest.." albums in CD and DIGIPACK versions.
The release of the third album by (V.E.G.A.) "Far From You" has been SUSPENDED until further notice in all formats.
BIOPSY
(V.E.G.A.), which stands for Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere is a project born in the late '90s. There have always been 3 members: Ravèz (Vocals, Guitars, Synths), Janos (Vocals, Drums) and Kekoz (Bass). The band is from Turin (Italy) even if Janos and Kekoz have been living in Norway from 2000 to 2006, therefore making the future of the band unstable. The band always recognised itself as an extreme music project not relating to any kind of musical genre. This led to their first album in 2000, totally self-produced, it was conceived as a mixture of the extreme music the members were into those years. Infact it's a mix of dark ambient and raw schizophrenic blackmetal. It's been released officially in January 2009 on CD by the french label Debemur Morti Productions. In 2002 a black pearl was conceived, the first officially released album named "Cocaine" was a step into blackmetal with some industrial feeling, pressed in limited vinyl version from "Legioni dell'Arcangelo Productions". The band's intention was to to compose a more "easy" album than its predecessor, more direct, fast and better produced. Still the album, which was then distributed worldwide thanks to Debemur Morti Productions in 2006 on cd and limited digipack, is today considered as an original interpretation of blackmetal. The band has been labelled as a "sick extreme music" project, and this is what it will always be about. A Mix of extreme music that changes over the years, evolving in a not predictable way. In 2009 the band finally gives birth to their own digital distributed net label "VEGA-KORPORATION" which has been created with the sole purpose of putting on the market all the hours of music (V.E.G.A.) managed to compose in the last 10 years and in the future as well, without having to deal with finding a proper label which fits the always harder to define genre of this unearthly project. The first official release by VEGA-KORPORATION will be the third album of (V.E.G.A.) named "Far From You" to be released worldwide on iTunes and Rhapsody (US only). It will be probably ready for download in March 2009. The tracks are available on this page in their entirety, 5 tracks for about one hour of music diving into avant-garde sick music. With this album the band intentionally left beind their blackmetal influences to focus on a more unpredictable experimental research in the deep mind's abyss to bring the listeners basically to lose themselves into a world of unknown obscurity. This is a tragic and beautiful experience for the fans of the "vacuum era gelid atmosphere". An attempt to compose another metal related album was done in 2008. The album named "Klinik" is kind of a ghost, never died, never born, we just have a couple of new tracks, one of them is on this page as a preview. Since our loss of interest for the blackmetal genre and most of all lack of time Klinik is far from its release. Only time will tell if we'll be back with this other piece of sickness. We all live in different countries, moving almost every year somewhere else, almost never in the same country together, so composing takes not months but years. This page is the only official website for (V.E.G.A.) and is mantained by Ravèz. VEGA-KORPORATION will probably be releasing all the side-projects of (V.E.G.A.) a well, this means ORGAN:, ZAYA etc. Janos and Kekoz are 2 of the 3 members of Norwegian band "Organ:" together with Jarle. Zaya is the electronic solo project by Ravèz. What we really care about is only composing music, not dealing with the music market and promotion, so the digital distribution thing perfectly suit our needs. To the labels: if you're interested in releasing our music on cd contact us. And now let the music speak for us...
OFFICIAL DISCOGRAPHY
"FAR FROM YOU"
( 2009 currently SUSPENDED - Composed between 1999 and 2008)
One hour of unclassifiable music split in 5 tracks, this album will take you away through a journey into the unknown, far from yourselves, lost in nowhere... yet another dimension offered by the Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere.
The original debut album of the band, a mix of the most extreme raw blackmetal and electronic soundscapes caging you into your own disturbed brain. Sick as only your mind can be.
A classic nowadays, this black pearl is what brought the attention of thousands sickos to a dark sick vision of the blackmetal world, with industrial influences to describe pure addiction to cerebral pain...Feed Your Insanity..
As your website say, V.E.G.A. was born in the late '90s and you have
already record three full albums. But V.E.G.A. is still pretty unknown.
So, for the begging, what can you say about history of the band?
The band was born as a project between me (Ravez) and Janos in late 90’s. We started being involved with blackmetal in ’97, i remember discovering Burzum, Emperor, Darkthrone, Dark Funeral, Mysticum, Manes and Dodheimsgard primarily. We were interested in making a blackmetal album influenced by the above bands. What we managed to compose was the originally titled “Cocaine – A Sick Mind’s Hologram”. We were quite surprised to see how weird that was sounding, but still it was very intense and extreme as well. We just thought that it hadn’t much to share with those bands and that nobody would have liked that album. So we tried to get rid of the electronic tracks and concentrate on the blackmetal tracks, re-recording them also in a studio with a clearer sound. So we didn’t release our first album back then. Rather we re-recorded it under the name “Cocaine” in 2001 but i ended up changing most of the composition of the tracks after Janos recorded the drums. Simply i don’t like doing the same thing twice. And it was a very mechanical and boring job to record everything again. So i felt like recomposing everything almost from scratch, keeping the same drums of the debut but this time recorded in the studio by Janos in a more professional way. The result was “Cocaine” in 2001, released only on vinyl by an old friend of mine in Turin, who showed interest for our release. After that we simply stopped composing music together, also because we change country very often and we never get to live in the same country together. (V.E.G.A.) was dead until 2006 when Debemur Morti Productions from Paris showed interest in resuming the project releasing ”Cocaine” in Cd. We agreed and the band started to be known in the underground. From then on we thought about making a new album, this time with digital drums, so that we don’t need to be in the studio together and we made an attempt in 2008 composing a demo-track for the album “Klinik”. In 2009 DMP offered to release our original debut, and i changed the title to avoid confusion, cause it’s quite different from “Cocaine” so we renamed it “Alienforest – A Sick Mind’s Hologram”. We actually had a couple of tracks recorded in late 90’s but not blackmetal songs, very experimental, and we also composed other electronic stuff in the following years so we gathered them in one album and released it in 2009 on our own, under the name “Far From You”. We loved those tracks so we released the album ourselves, not looking for labels, cause it’s so weird that i guess nobody can make money out of it. Not even us actually.
V.E.G.A. stands for Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere. Could you explain why
choose so weird and uncommon name for band?
Actually it has the parenthesis as well so it is (V.E.G.A.) . The name of the band comes from the name we gave to one of the first tracks we composed. The track gave us this feeling of cold emptiness and we liked it a lot.
I must say that your music is very weird and psychodelic. Where is that "strangeness" comes from?
From our minds i guess ahhaha… i don’t know why we make weird music, it just comes natural to us. I personally like everything that is weird, different, new… that’s my nature i guess.
Do you take a lot of positive reply and good reviews for your works?
So far i was surprised by the positive feedback. Of course most of it came from the blackmetal scene but i would be much more interested in knowing what people think about “Far From You”. Black metal has standards and it’s easy to say whether you like a band or not because you can compare it to a million of other bands. It’s funny how i always discover names of bands that we sound like in the reviews, when i actually don’t know any of them. And every time i try to listen to this bands to find those supposed similarities i see that the comparison makes usually no sense. Anyway i like when i read we are appreciated for being different, and most of all intense. Every other of those bands i tried listening was very boring and far from being intense or extreme anyway.
If you have to describe your music in a few words, what would you say?
Our music is our music and i’m proud we are the only ones who can compose this stuff. And i’m not talking about “Cocaine” which was meant to be clearly a blackmetal album, that was just a starting point. I’m talking about everything else we did and will do. It’s a state of mind, kind of a cinematic experience, we grab the listener and cage him in his own mind until the album finishes.
Your new album is only available on the internet stores. Do you ever
consider releasing "Far From You" in more "physical" form?
“Far From You” will be available in CD in August 2009 on Amazon. Since we don’t really think to be able to sell copies and repay us from releasing it on a cool CD version, and we wouldn’t even know where to start looking for a label interested in this experimental stuff ,the only thing we can do is releasing it on Amazon cause it’s almost free and the final price is half of the cds you buy in stores. It would be nice to have a bunch of fans who support the band so that we can produce the albums on our own providing also some cool artwork on digipack releases, but we can’t say how many people like our band and how many of them like more the blackmetal side or the electronic one. If the album will sell on Amazon then we can consider releasing all our discography. But all this mess of dealing with rights, distribution, press and stuff is really annoying. So far Amazon is the only alternative possible. If a label instead comes in and publish our stuff, not only the blackmetal releases like DMP did, then the problem is solved. But we’ll never search for a label. We don’t care about selling or being known around. We compose when we feel like, everything else is not our business. Consider the Amazon CD and mp3 releases a gift to fans.
Releases from V.E.G.A. are pretty hard to find. Do you thinking about
some re-editions in future?
As i said, either a label offers its services or you will only find our releases on DMP and Amazon on CD. Mp3 on iTunes and Amazon mp3.
Can you tell us something about "lost" album "Klinik"?
This album is a pain the ass. Because involves too many problems we need to deal with in order to compose it. So we keep postponing its composition. If it was electronic rather than played with guitars and bass that would be a lot quicker. So i really have no idea on when we’ll move on with that album, i’m sorry. DMP is waiting for it as well, cause they will release it and pay the studio to record it. But i’m simply bored about playing physical instruments, and Janos as well, he hasn’t touch drums in the last 5 years. But never say never, when time will come and conditions will be favourable we’ll make it.
Is there's a chance that V.E.G.A. will play few concerts in future?
No. It’s simply impossible. We keep in touch through the web but we played together 10 years ago rehearsing like 5-6 times, that’s it. We wouldn’t even know where to start. “Cocaine - ASMH” was composed recording the drums first, music was composed on top of it, we almost never played together.
On your albums you have mixed many different styles and means of
expression. It came to you naturally or was it a conscious choice?
It comes natural to compose stuff being influenced by the bands you like i guess. But our albums are very different from each other, and each one was meant to be that way. The same way most bands keep recording the same album over and over, we do the opposite by doing every time something different.
I suppose you listen to very varied music. Can you tell us what
music..artist recently you consider as the best?
It’s really impossible to answer this question. I like too many different artists to choose one as the best. I can say I like relaxing and dramatic music more than everything.
What can you tell us about your inspirations?
I try to draw everything from emotions, of any kind. So everything that moves me is an inspiration. Basically life itself. I like to use music to describe in an unconscious subtle way an emotion or moment or feeling.
I know that you write on myspace about loss of interest for the
blackmetal genre. Can you explain us why? Do you think that black metal
came to it's limits, isn't the same thing that back in 90's or something
completly else?
Blackmetal is a music genre and i’ve lost interest for all genres. What i’m interested into are not trends or people or beliefs, my only interest is the emotion i get from an album. If it moves me it’s good, if not i don’t really need it. It’s very simple. Ten years ago i used to distinguish music in genres, but if i make an album now you won’t be able to label it. And i like that, we got rid of the bullshit that people attach to standards. I haven’t been listening to any blackmetal bands since 2002 so I don’t know how the scene would sound like today.
I must say, that when i think of Italy, metal music isn't the first
thought that comes to my mind. Still, in that country are some good
metal bands, including yours. Do you like some italian metal bands? And,
do you think that V.E.G.A. is part of "the scene"?
I don’t know italian metal bands apart from the ones we are usually compared to, and i always find them to be really boring and flat emotionally. We aren’t part of anything else than our music, and i hope we’ll never be “part of” something, this would kill our artistic freedom which is the essence of (V.E.G.A.)
What will be future for V.E.G.A.? Any gueses?
No idea. But i will continue to compose music as long as i’m alive. In August i’m releasing my solo album on CD through Amazon as well. It’s experimental electronic music i composed in the last 10 years collected in a 73min long CD. It will be available in mp3 as well. Years ago i wanted to release this stuff under the name “Zaya” but then i figured out that since its solo stuff i could simply use my name. The album name is “Mother”. In the future I’ll be releasing many other albums on my own, ranging from electronic to orchestral and piano music, to who knows what..
Last words are for you.
I encourage everyone to listen to our music for free in its entirety on our website at www.vega-korporation.com which now redirects to our myspace at www.myspace.com/vacuumera
Thanks for the interest and be free, always.
The schizophrenic, electronics-tinged brand of metal (V.E.G.A.) displayed on 2002’s “Cocaine” and the last year’s “Alienforest” was a pretty clear indication that this is no ordinary metal band. But even with their previous output, the highly experimental nature of “Far From You,” the band’s most recent release, comes as a bit of a surprise. (V.E.G.A.)’s description of the album as “unclassifiable music” which will “take you away through a journey into the unknown, far from yourselves, lost in nowhere…” is actually a pretty accurate one. There are hints of metal, long electronic and ambient sections, and bits of post-rock thrown in at various places on the album. Songs range from nostalgic and spacey to downright disturbing. While it’s definitely not the (V.E.G.A.) that we may have expected, one has to admit that their talent for metal is equalled by the skill they display on “Far From You” while indulging their more experimental side.
The album’s opener, ‘9 rooms,’ is a great example of the blend of styles and tones that (V.E.G.A.) so skillfully manipulates throughout the album. It begins with a meandering dual guitar riff, and then transitions to spacey electronics and hushed keyboards before giving way to an all-out post-rock finale. The surprising and impressive thing about this and other tracks on the album is that none of these transitions and shifts in texture seem forced or out-of-place; instead each new passage sounds like a continuation of the previous one.
The rest of the album is a similar blend of ambient electronica, samples and other elements. Of particular note is ‘4 AM’, which is easily the darkest and most disturbing track on the album. While most of “Far From You” is pretty mellow and easy to lose yourself in, ‘4 AM’ presents the listener with what can only be described as an audio depiction of insanity - various hints of music, voices and other things drift in and out while constant persistent background noise pulses in the background, punctuated by a very unsettling intermittent sound which eventually becomes the dominant element in the mix.
So will fans of (V.E.G.A.)’s past releases be able to appreciate the material on “Far From You?” Certainly it’s almost impossible to recognize the music as having been created by the same band that cranked out songs like ‘Insex Infect’ or ‘Kill Me.’ Guitars and traditional metal drumming are only present in a few places over the course of the album, and aggressive vocals are completely absent. What remains, however, is (V.E.G.A.)’s ability to create mind-altering and unpredictable music that seamlessly mix elements from different genres. It’s kind of like The Axis of Perdition’s more ambient creations, but without the horror element. Obviously, fans of outright brutal metal will find little to enjoy, but those who can appreciate original and evocative music similar to some of the more abstract tracks (V.E.G.A.) has released in the past should find that “Far From You” is a pleasant surprise.
While we are admittedly totally obsessed with damaged and demented, freaky and fucked up, bizarre and obtuse outsider black metal, every once in a while we'll discover a band who manage to incorporate bits of all of those things, but in a way that's much more subtle. A band can be really weird without being totally fucked up. Completely demented without stumbling and struggling and sounding totally damaged. A band can be furious and fast, heavy and complex, brutal and intense, but still be super far out and perplexingly bizarre. Think Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, and now the VEGA Corporation. Or V.E.G.A. Or more specifically, Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere. Thanks to AQ pal Drew for turning us on to these guys. We were definitely surprised when we finally heard them. Not at all what you might expect. With a name like Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, and a record called Cocaine. Some trippy abstract very UN-metal artwork and a liner note proclamation that goes like this: "(V.E.G.A.) supports freedom of thought, sometimes misunderstood as insanity by the most. The band was born at the last breaths of black metal and dies soon after. This album is a gift to its memory... a dead-born child... a trip went wrong... a nightmare in your brain... Feed your insanity... We now live in the future... as lights, always hiding in the dark, yet shining... as a new band, "VEGA-KORPORATION" Totally devoted to the exploration of mind, soul and technology..." We were totally prepared for some stumbling recorded-in-a-cave, howling, midtempo, warbly damaged black buzz. And we would have been totally happy with that for sure. But this band is absolutely nothing like that at all. V.E.G.A. are impossibly grim and so Incredibly fierce and furious. We talk about black metal bands sounding buzzy all the time, but this is a whole 'nother thing. The first track is some sort of ultimate demonic buzz direct from the fiery pit. A buzz that is sharp and jagged, so blown out and strangely panned, that it almost makes you dizzy listening to it. Careening like a pissed off swarm of hornets from speaker to speaker, the buzz distorts and crumbles, fades out and then swoops back in super hot and completely oversaturated. It definitely sounds like there is something seriously wrong with your speakers, in a GOOD way! And within that buzz is a twisting squirming vortex of fuzzy riffs, insanely blasting beats, shrieked vocals, all in a dense super complex tangle of black fury. One song was all it took. Not only were we totally and completely sold. We were also totally brutalized. Exhausted. Our ears beaten to a bloody pulp. And we LOVED it. The record veers wildly back and forth between impossibly brutal buzzing and more Burzumic midtempos with just a bit of a groove like Khold. But either way, the songs are dense and dark, furious and brilliantly fucked up. And that's not even taking into account the non-metal elements which are legion. Songs are peppered with weird sonic bits, and separated by haunting interludes that range from creepy children singing to women screaming in terror, stretches of industrial pummel with skittery drum machines and super processed Laibachian Teutonic growls to dreamy blissed out minor key jangle with Mark E. Smith sort-of-spoken vocals, massive glacial dirgescapes of downtuned sludge, peppered with Godflesh style beats to weird folky foresty ambience. But unlike a lot of bands, those bits are just that, bits, little bits of unlikely shading, small demented complements to the bands furious metallic onslaught. That is until you get to the epic fourteen minute closing track. A vast expanse of weird record crackle spread in a thick patina over soaring minor key strings and distant muted drums. Creepy and dreary, but sort of super emotional and sublime. It sounds a bit like an old scratched up Godspeed 45 being played on a Victrola while on another Victrola, someone is playing a super scuffed copy of some old Scorn 12" on the wrong speed, the machine like beats perfectly drifting into the majestic grandeur of the strings and swoonsome ambience. After a brief bit of silence, we're suddenly tossed into some sort of weird eighties sounding synth rock, a bizarre electronic drums drenched video game music sort of jam that is just totally twisted and not a little bit out of place. It eventually morphs into a more metal version of Goblin, creepy and slightly cheesy with big thick distorted guitars laid over top. Woah. A definite contender twisted black metal record of the year for sure!
Alienforest - A Sick Mind's Hologram
The tongue twistingly monickered Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, who shell henceforth be referred to as VEGA, has been a huge favorite around these parts, ever since we first laid ears on their Cocaine album. When we first got that record we were really expecting something fucked up and damaged and bizarre, but instead, Cocaine ended up being one of the fiercest most frenzied and fastest black metal discs we had ever heard, a total soul shearing onslaught so drenched in buzz it seems impossible that the whole thing didn't collapse under the weight of all that buzzing and blasting. Well here we are revisiting VEGA's past, and guess what, they actually did used to be seriously fucked up and bizarre, their black metal still fierce and frenetic, but tempered by weird eighties style Goblin-y synthscapes and weirdo new wave and all sorts of other whatthefuck-ness. The opener is appropriately black metal, an intro, but even there, the brooding synths and ominous drones are laced with processed children's voices which are FREAKY. So then, as black metal record law dictates, the next track should be a serious blast of black metal fury, but here, well, it sounds like some eighties John Carpenter soundtrack, or the chase scene in some cheesy sci-fi flick, or Goblin at their new waviest, but fuck it, who cares what the BM bylaws dictate, this stuff is awesome. Haunting and cheesy, dramatic and so over the top, and all over the place, slipping into some ominous synthy drones, before transforming into some minimal almost jungle jam, the skittery beats underneath warm woozy synths and creepy minor key melodies, and finally some harsh black metal vox over the top. And then buzzing guitars. Dropping in with about 50 seconds to go. Fuck yeah. Did we mention we love these guys? Well we love them even more now. It's not all insane cheesy new wave weirdness, the follow up "Kill Me" explodes in a frenzy of grinding blackness, but even then, part way in, shifts gears and becomes super melodic with soaring melodies, and mathy rhythms, but you know what, by the end, the track has somehow transformed into another synth drenched skittery new wave outro. And so it goes. Easily half the record is soundtracky new wave-y weirdness. And these guys nail it. Zombi, Proscriptor, you Carpenter / Goblin revisionists better watch your asses, cuz this takes all that stuff and gets it all tangled up with black buzz and blurred blasts. And those are definitely the best moments, when harsh vocals are laid over skittery electronic drums and whirling synths, so wrong it's right! The band are still capable of spewing black filth with the best of them, "Insex Infect" is a solid 4 minutes of blown out in-the-red black heaviness, putting most BM bands to shame, but then moments later, they offer up a creepy bit of synthy ambience, only to lurch right back into another black frenzy. The black metal here is top notch, so heavy and brutal and grim, incredible riffs and wild drumming, harsh vokills, and dense tangled arrangements, but the other stuff, it's not just throw away, like most bands tossing in a little keyboard interlude, it's well crafted, dark and mysterious and haunting, ominous and sinister, even without the metal, this would have been an awesome retro chunk of new wave Goblin worship, but with the metal, it's something far more fucked up and GENIUS. Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases. Andee's black metal reissue of the year!!!!
I have always approached dance music with a certain prejudice that it is designed only to be enjoyed by those who are “off their heads.” Being that I have a somewhat conservative view on drug-taking, I have naturally never been let in on its furtive appeal; I never quite got the invite to that party, not that I should desire jumping around to DJ wotsit’s bangin’ choons any more than I am tempted to pop ten Mitsubishi’s in the ladies’ bathroom. (Once again, I digress. I’m doing a lot of that lately!) Perhaps just for once the peer pressure may have actually got to me. As I listen to V.E.G.A. I can’t help but feel kind of like there is a great big shindig going on that I’m not invited to…or maybe to put it more accurately, it’s like I’m stuck in a room surrounded by a load of mates dropping acid, where nothing they say makes the blindest bit of sense but to themselves.
I never quite heeded the warning from my esteemed associate that this was going to be a complete headfuck, but I don’t think I could sum up the album any better myself. From the skewed spoken parts that open the proceedings, this is one fucked up acid trip supreme; all 74:03 minutes of it leading you through a continual journey into the psyche as you pass through a jungle of colour swirls that surround a central world of warped reality. The sirenesque synths that taint the ambience of ‘Cocaine’ merge with a darkwave drum beat, projecting a 70’s kind of vibe that fizzles out into a bleak lacuna that re-builds itself into a dark serenity filled out with some drum and bass rhythms that work splendidly. ‘Kill Me’ succeeds it with much more of a low-fi projection that unleashes layers of fuzz at you from all corners. There is an underlying volatility that lays largely dormant throughout this album, that spews up ephemeral and sporadic eruptions that vaguely crack through the surface.
‘The Gentle Rain’ kind of does what it says on the tin really, providing a gentle interlude before the full on ravaging of ‘Plastiktashen’ (why does this name cause me to envision a plastic moustache? Oh, the joys of foreign song titles!). The rain falls against the metallic ground, scraping and creating a strange, eerie ambience that really I think would be sure to freak me the fuck out if I were actually tripping. In fact, it seems to drag me through a dark and dreary forest in the thick of night, as I squelch my way through the rain-drenched mud running from the shadows that stalk the night as they creep up from behind. As if to confirm my thoughts that very little on this album actually makes any sense, ‘Fish, Smoke and Satan’ comes drifting in with its schizophrenic aura of introspective voices that monotonously maunder through the tripped out transcendental trance that provides a mellow aural sponge that seeks to soak you into its ambience. This comes across so much like the series of voices that lurk at the back of your mind telling you to do things that you really shouldn’t…or maybe it is the distant voices seeping through from people who are presently on some far away planet.
The dynamics of this album see us taken truly on a journey through disparate terrains; in fact, most of these 15 tracks offer something totally different to the last one; from the harsh discordancy of ‘Insex Infect’ and ‘Fleisch’ which certainly strips you of all of yours, to the desolate yet warmly embracing synth-pop of ‘Pulse Blood Pulse’ or the volcanic crackling of ‘Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere’ (or V.E.G.A. in case you were wondering), which finishes off the album with what seems to take you right back to where we began with the strangely warped ‘Wilkommen’, only with a much more forlorn sensibility. The gradient build up and subsequent collapse of this track certainly carries a doom-laden flavour, before the dispersed white noise of the bonus track ‘Alienforest’ literally makes me feel as though my mind is being tapped into by aliens and my head is about to explode at any moment. This outro ebbs and flows for a good ten minutes, offering little more than sporadic noises that seem at times unsettling, at others rather foreboding and towards the end we are taken out with what sounds to me like birds twittering as the dawn breaks.
As I make my return to the tangible world, I return also to my initial uncharacteristic curiosity towards acid, where I made my point that this album has me wondering what it is like to be “off my head.’ Now that reality has once again sunk in, sagacity prevails and tells me that if an album can have such a tripped out effect on my psyche, then why should one need to go to the trouble of hassling some back alley dealer-cum-pimp, parting with hard earned cash (strike the hard earned part) to fund criminal activity, all before dropping a tab of LSD? It makes very little sense. The best part about this kind of trip is that there is no comedown!
As I start this text, one question rises immediately, above all: Have you ever been on drugs? I mean, serious drugs, like cocaine or heroine, those kinds of substances that actually grab people and turn them into morbid addicts that can only think about getting more Money for the next dose, whenever they aren’t high, making their conscience evolve into an amorphous dead mass with a single objective and turning people into dangerous, fearless and cold automatons, as their sanity rapidly decay. The person’s psyche grows weaker and thinner, revealing its frailties and most inner thoughts. Even a person who has never been on these types of drugs, after listening carefully Cocaine’s successor, called Alienforest – A Sick Mind’s Hologram (A-ASMH), will feel in its body and soul the trials that one must suffer along the tortuous path of drug consumption. After experiencing what (V.E.G.A.) has to show us in this debut, one should obviously feel like it has lived that past hour in the body and mind of a junkie, on fast-forward motion, through all its key moments of its miserable life, thanks to an evocative soundtrack, capable of making people question what its wrong or right and what are the limits of the human psyche.
Please, before embracing yourselves into the world of (V.E.G.A.), make sure that you are ready to take this step, for this record is not for faint-hearted and easily impressed people. Therefore, I must advise you to think twice before entering this dark and menacing realm, that has insanity and reality in equal shares. Continuous listening sessions may induce paranoia, hysteria, hallucinations and full amnesia. Now seriously, this album is one of the most disturbing I’ve ever heard and I’ve heard a lot of creepy and distorted stuff.
To give you a glimpse of what to expect, I’ll start with a brief description of the first tracks:
A-ASMH presents itself with a fairly disturbing synth intro accompanied by haunting alien moans but building a strong suspense that is rare to witness these days both musically and cinematographically, much thanks to the increasingly foreboding keys that set the stage remarkably, inducing a feeling of discovery about to happen, turning “Wilkommen” into a particularly well named track. Even though “Cocaine” (the second track, not the previous work) represents the first explosion of pleasure delivered by the substance, it doesn’t continue that way for too long, speeding up more and more before finally giving place to “Kill Me”, which I like to view as the first hangover image portrayed by a song in here. The insane screaming at the start, matched up by the raging and highly distorted guitars, followed closely by fierce drum work, blasts mercilessly taking you by surprise giving you a sense of total screw up: You have just done something very wrong, you’re coughing, puking and your head aches severely. From now on (V.E.G.A.) will take you on a journey that is sure that you won’t easily forget, a sonic landscape viewed from the eyes of a drug addict. It will reach and explore many distinct emotional states, touching almost every thought and emotion felt by the poor individual, the vehicle of your trip. A-ASMH is quite spontaneous and impossible to expect, since it can be frightening in a moment, dead calm in the next, just to become savagely crazy in another second. This is indeed one of its greatest qualities and attractions and while possessing a vast array of different sections and styles, (V.E.G.A.) actually manage to pull it off nicely, effectively creating multiple tensions and uneasy moments (with its fair share of resting in between), but remarkably creating a rather cohesive tale, susceptible of various interpretations, but which I found to make a lot of sense when interpreted as a testimony from a sick guy’s mind.
It is incredible how this Italian trio from Turin has the capacity of becoming magnificent storytellers in selective turf, as black metal is. Besides the first drug consumption scene and the first hangover, you will be able to visualize the whole picture easily that consists in an awkwardly vicious and dramatic change of the feelings felt on those two states of pleasure and pain. Basically, you will notice how the ferocity of the hangovers will jump into sessions of drug consumption and how the apparent calm and peace from the former drug effects will carve even bigger chasms on the subjects personality while he isn’t under the effects of substances. This tragic emotion exchange between these two conditions is quite compelling to assimilate and may be initially reckoned on track 4, “Neongraphite”, due to its explosive mixture of disco sound, guitar distortion and damaged screams. From that moment, roles get inverted and whereas the emotions got swapped, next cacophony sessions will belong to the state of “highness”, becoming even more callous black metal dissertations. These dissertations showcase the undeniable talent of the band when it comes to craft a grimy primitivism present on the individual’s conscience and evidenced on the actions taken in order to have another dose. I firmly believe that in here lies another great aspect of this album, an idea that allows the listener to reflect a little about the ridiculous human condition and all its weaknesses. In here, the anti-Aristotelic philosophy present on the usual human brain is dissected and strongly questioned about its aim. The Aristotelic Philosophy proclaims that cautious moderation is the greatest virtue and to achieve that virtue, reason should always prevail against passions (passions corrupt the reason, nothing new here). Telling this story of drug excesses that leads to very unpleasant results and ultimately leads to the end of the individual as a sane person, (V.E.G.A.) manage to exhibit the stupidity inherent to the human psyche, without falling into too much detail and without discussing it extensively, so they are just simply pointing it out, something that curiously I’ve found to be rather paradoxal, given the excessive intensity present on the tracks.
More than thinking and before thinking, this record makes the listener do something else: feel. Indeed, these aren’t emotions that you would wish to feel on a regular basis, but on the other hand, this is what makes this record so special, the capacity of putting you in the middle of a filthy netherworld that you never wanted to witness neither to live. To experience such decaying vision is what makes not only a good record, but also a good movie for example. That adrenaline mixed with fear and astonishment you get when you watch a great film for the first time is exactly the same as when you listen to A-ASMH.
Now that I’ve talked a bit about the concepts behind this second album, I believe I should reveal some pieces of the music itself, instrumentally speaking. By now, you already know that this album comprised of black metal tracks, some dance stuff resembling 70’s/80’s disco and Europop stuff with some more bizarre electronic infusions. The album’s structure is quite simple as the BM/Disco/BM/Instrumental sequence will attest but this repetitive succession is both important and necessary to establish that line of thought that allows the previously mentioned concepts to make sense due to the ever-increasing intensity of the tracks.
The instrumental and disco parts oscillate between the “spooky” and the “unnerving”, due to the stellar use of synthesizers both in a traditional variant and in the form of piano bits. Honestly, these are moments where the bass is really important, audible and its job is put into better use of. Other than that, there aren’t a lot of moments where you can clearly discern the bass from the rest of the pandemonium, which is a bit unfortunate. Nevertheless, the vocal department deserves praises due to its versatility, better exemplified by the howling rasps, tired spoken passages and indecipherable screeches. Yes, you will different vocal styles in A-ASMH, for this ain’t no ordinary black metal album, with the same vocal patterns and guitar riffs played over and over again. However, the guitars have almost no use at all on these moments and the drum work is easy at best, becoming almost irrelevant, so these aren’t particularly good choices to analyze their importance in the overall sound. It is on the baleful black metal parts that these two instruments demonstrate their full power, while the guitars play frostbitten riffs and the drums gobble ferocious blast beats. The glacial riffs from the guitars aren’t all that original and innovative, but even though they’re bathed in a pool of reverb, they still sound rather incisive and unrestrained, much like a maniac on the loose. They also don’t repeat themselves exaggeratedly since the songs carry a very interesting non-linear structure, evolving freely into undetermined territory. If they are so simple, they obviously far from anything technical so there is no-nonsense fretboard abuse and the horribly lumpy production only helps them to become even more powerful, therefore making the band sound refreshingly unpretentious. And as if that wasn’t enough, the drumming is highly adequate, with continuous dirty and evil blast beats, plus the occasional clashing rolls that will make the listener rejoice and rapidly convince him to accompany the sound with some air drumming.
While I still haven’t gathered the time to listen and focus on (V.E.G.A.)’s previous output, I had plenty of time to completely suck this album, something that could be very hard to do when you have only heard it a couple of times. There are those albums that you listen and from the moment it starts, you exactly what you into, pleasant or not. Then there are those that just grab you by the balls, with such strength that makes it pretty hard to come back to reality and concentrate on life again. A-ASMH hits you with a punch strong enough to make you puke all your entire dinner in a row, leaving you completely baffled and breathless and there aren’t a lot of albums out there that have the same effect on people. With a curious and somewhat sick breed of black metal fused with psychedelic dark ambient, (V.E.G.A.) created an unclassifiable monster of biblical proportions that is sure to leave your perceptions forever changed. I’m once again surprised for having found another Italian gem (my last one was Janvs’ latest effort, curiously called Vega) that once again changes my Top 10 of 2008. This ain’t no nice record, this isn’t beautiful nor innocent, on A-ASMH you will only find decay, death, ugliness and whether you’re looking for a complex and original black metal album, a tortuous journey across a twisted mind or simply up for a mental challenge, this is the right choice for you. Simply put, this is a modern classic and an essential buy for the collection of any BM fan.
Ok, thank you. I'll get Far from you on Itunes in order to review it for my french webzine, even if I think that a review can't be done correctly without the full artwork. Awesome and enigmatic cover.
"(V.E.G.A.) supports freedom of thought, sometimes misunderstood as insanity by the most.
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