Vessel of Iniquity - Vessel of Iniquity

Vessel of Iniquity has a similar effect as seeing Deiphago live. Sunglasses and all. A wall of sound with little recognizable composition structure or melodic movement; artillery firing continuously without reprieve or synchronicity; the call of crickets over frogs on a warm night in Pennsylvania; the stampede of human feet on busy city streets... and yet, in such droning cacophonies are patterns left to be discerned and discovered; the faster rate of fire of one specific gun with a more competent unit to load its shells; the one closest cricket's variegated chirp; a successful confident woman's high heels clacking above the impoverished soft-soled dirty sneakers of the homeless. Finding the individual elements to latch on to is limited in the sense of Vessel of Iniquity - there are only so many instruments and sounds in the arrangement at least - but it can be approached the same way. Music where you want to find music, beauty where you want to see beauty, extremity if you want to be alarmed.

Breaking down the components of S. P. White's project, then, can both help understand how to hear Vessel of Iniquity, as well as hinder the greater scene before us. At times, I wonder whether we want to separate the components or not. Does doing so lose something of the project's purpose of being? It would be simple enough to an extent to explain the underlying droning melodic elements which exist in all three of the tracks, to denote the atmospheric blasting drumming and percussive elements, and opine on the psychedelic black metal rasps which constitute White's vocals. Guitars offer an essentially indiscernible spray of static particulates across the mix, like distant blips of light in the pith of the cosmic expanse called 'sky'. An overall deep, low mix - perhaps a result of the tape media I am hearing this on - is just the right quantity of murk to add an opaque quality to the medium, without completely filling the recording with flotsam.



What is truly of note, is the combined effect of all these minutia. A swallowing gulping trio of big empty misery. It's funeral doom, but opposite. Instead of big long empty spaces between long singular notes, Vessel of Iniquity creates big empty walls of sound across flitting bursts of double bass, static guitars, and the endless droning of singular long-form melodic atmosphere that serves as an existential backdrop upon which all the other other instrumentation finds footing. In this grand funeral-doom sense, it's easy to view the three songs as one long song with two small breathing points, and doing so, it should not be faulted for feeling that the fifteen minute runtime is just a tad too short for even this EP. Considered as Black Metal, though, it's a perfect quick blast of hatred for the desirous ears.

It's easy to question the role of what I would deem solid-mass-metal in the current climate of extremity. For me, Vessel of Iniquity isn't more extreme than harsh noise power electronics. It also isn't as extreme in the opposite direction of incredibly melodic atmospheric black metal. Much like Thrash Metal, this too falls somewhere in the middle of extremity. So what does the genre, and Vessel of Iniquity truly offer us? It's the same enjoyment as a Word Search, but you've not been given words to find. Instead you decide what you want to discern and gleam from the patterns of sonic abandon. The final track on this tape, "Choronzon," is the most complete puzzle here, building from a sullen spoken word intro, slowly adding layers of droning guitar, distant percussion, the recognizable atmospheric hiss drawing the listener hither. The track exemplifies Vessel of Iniquity as creating something beyond sound; a complete maze to enter and exit.