After
a small period of respite, Gerhard Hallstatt’s Allerseelen project
has seen a burst of activity in 2017: a brand new album, Dunkelgraue
Lieder, comes two
years after their last album Terra
Incognita; an appearance on the Alpha Ωmega
compilation; and a brand new non-album single, Anubis/Chairete
Daimones, the
project’s first single since 2009’s Sonne
Golthi-Ade.
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| Allerseelen 7" single - from personal collection |
Allerseelen
proper, since the 2010s, has definitely shifted its configuration
from being a one-man project with a peppering of guests to something
a more solid. The albums and releases have gotten more robust, while
still maintaining that distinguished Allerseelen sound, with the same
guest performers becoming more like recurring key personnel, with
lots of crossover with collaborators of projects helmed by producer
Marcel P. Marcel highlights this phenomenon in conjunction with his
production duties for Anubis/Chairete
Daimones:
“The
music of Allerseelen is constantly evolving with more styles,
instruments, collaborators and even guest-vocalists. It’s a
tapestry of music, if you will. A group-effort guided and directed by
Gerhard. My
part as a producer (totally separate from my part as a musician or
vocalist) is to “bring everything together”. There are
challenges, especially ambient noises (because some of the different
track parts come from semi-professional studios). But over the last
couple of years we’ve become a well-rehearsed and established team.
Faye R. worked with me on Miel Noir songs, Voron and I have been
doing a couple of tracks for Allerseelen together and Gerhard has
come to rely on my production and arrangement ever since the MCD
before the Rauhe
Schale album.
It may not be a “band” in the classical sense (like people
meeting in real life and working stuff out in a room together), but
it’s the kind of “musical alchemy” which Gerhard used to do by
himself, done as a group.”
The
first track, “Anubis,” features Algerian singer Faye R. on vocal
duties. Faye R.’s cover of “Runes and Men” attracted the
attention and friendship of Hallstatt and Marcel P., which opened up
collaborations for both Miel Noir and Allerseelen. The Egyptian motif
of “Anubis” was a natural fit for Faye R.: “...the song itself
has that alternative Middle Eastern side which I already like, my
voice is naturally like this, I embraced the song since the first
time I heard it because I felt like it defined me.”
For
Hallstatt, “Anubis” draws inspiration from a few different
sources, the first being the Moon Tarot card as designed by Aleister
Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris which depicts two towers with jackals.
The dark imagery of the tarot card was the catalyst for the song, but
Hallstatt also draws inspiration from coyotes, specifically a
performance piece by Joseph Beuys, along with coyote quotations
lifted from Carlos Castaneda and Charles Manson.
“Anubis”
is a jarring Allerseelen song in that it has a heavy metal
atmosphere, without going full metal, showing the project actively
incorporating other styles into the formula. The repetitive, gravelly
industrial loops that is customary in an Allerseelen song are still
present in the background, but emphasis has been placed on the
metal-ish guitar, Arabian-inspired music flourishes, and the vocals
from Faye R. which sound symphonic.
The
second and final track, “Chairete Daimones,” is pure Allerseelen
in both music composition and occult subject matter. Per Hallstatt,
the genesis of the second track, “Chairete Daimones,” came from
the desire to create a song about a Gnostic Ritual described by
Friedrich Nietzsche in one of his letters:
“[Nietzsche]
decided to drink some red wine with friends who lived in other
cities. At the same time [his friends] left [their] house[s] and
drank on the street dark red wine – they drank one half but spilled
and offered, sacrificed [the other] half of the wine to the demons
with the words ‘Chairete Daimones’ (be greeted, demons). This was
on 23rd October 1871, the exact time was ten in the evening.
[Nietzsche] lived then in Basel, Switzerland, his friends in Berlin
and Kiel. Demons in this context he did not consider as evil spirits
but as benevolent powers, in the sense of the antiquity like Marc
Aurel or also many centuries later in the writings of Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe.”
This
is not the first time Allerseelen has explored the world of spirits,
with the split album Barco
Do Vinho with Sangre
Cavallum and the song “Svyatoe Vino” from their Men
Among the Ruins split
album with Changes also being about libations. The music of “Chairete
Daimones” throttles back to standard Allerseelen fare, with
repetitive industrial loops and spoken-word style lyrics.
Limited
to 200 copies, the
Anubis/Chairete Daimones single
is handsomely packaged: a white 7” vinyl with a hint of marbling,
in a foldable sleeve with dark-impressionistic artwork by Laetitia
Mantis, who has had artwork featured on releases from Allerseelen
alumni projects Fahl and Sagittarius. Consumers who purchase the 7”
directly from New Era receive an additional foldable sleeve with the
band name and release title stamped in gold foil. Allerseelen being
released by New Era seems like an odd choice since that label focuses
on black metal. Per Hallstatt though, it was at New Era’s request
that Allerseelen release a single with them: “The owner of the
label asked us if we have something dark that may fit. So we decided
to record for this special edition [release] two songs that have a
rather dark and demonic atmosphere. Or twilight atmosphere. ...[We
had a] layout that concentrated on the colours of blood and night but
then thought that white vinyl could be a perfect contrast.” As
nicely packaged and presented the release is, having a digital copy
would have been a nice medium to have available, though it might
degrade the limited/special edition aspect of the release.
Because
of this, the Anubis/Chairete
Daimones
7” single is a curio release, probably geared more toward the
die-hard Allerseelen fans and completionists rather than a casual
listener. Both songs are executed well though and are
canonical-sounding Allerseelen songs, with “Anubis” in particular
showing unique dash of metal infusion.
Official Links
Bandcamp: https://allerseelen.bandcamp.com/
