Walk Through Fire has never been a band I’d seek out for joy, but their new album Till Aska is another step forward for the band — forward, into a dark, bottomless pit. Sad, bleak, and slow, Till Aska pushes sludge to its breaking point, instilling the ethos and melancholy of funeral doom into the caustic genre. In fact, in this dour brew of sludge and doom metal, it can be pretty difficult to figure out if the choking, howled vocals are depressed or furious, and if each new heartbreaking chord should stir anger or douse spirits. Droning organ and churning guitars only heighten this suspense, ominous and scathing at the same time. Weaving in and out like slow waves coming in and out of phase, each united chord comes hard-fought and arrives with crushing impact.
This superposition of grief and fury is one that the album art provokes as well, which is a 1903 painting by Käthe Kollwitz titled Woman with Dead Child. Like in the artwork, there’s an ambiguity to the despair on this record that prompts the listener to respond how they best see fit — does a new tragedy warrant sadness, rage, or both?
Walk Through Fire has no interest in explicitly answering this question for listeners, but they did share some interesting notes on each track of the album with us — read on below as you listen.
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Till Aska – Track-by-Track Rundown from Walk Through Fire
Track 1 — “Till Aska”
The title track “Till Aska” opens the album with a monotonous dirge. Its slow progression with very little variation in the first minutes sets the mood for the entire album. It demands total capitulation to the emotional force that’s ahead.
Track 2 — “Fall i Glömska”
The main theme of “Fall I Glömska” was originally written for piano back in 2006. It sprung from an idea for a film Juliusz had inspired by the car scene in The Silence Of The Lambs where Starling is travelling to meet Dr. Hannibal Lecter for the first time.
Track 3 — “Genom Sår”
Like with most of our songs “Genom Sår” initially had a working title: “Funeral Sludge”. We simply wanted to make something of a crossover between funeral doom and sludge. And I think we achieved that pretty well.
Track 4 — “Självförintelse”
“Självförintelse” translates to “self annihilation” and is a song with a lot of emotional force. Its slow and twisted groove builds up to one of the highest climaxes of the album. It’s a truly cathartic piece of music.
Track 5 — “Rekviem”
The final piece “Rekviem” is the only entirely instrumental song of the album. It’s a tribute to the late Angelo Badalamenti. The starting point of writing the song was inspired by Badalamenti’s main title theme for the film Mulholland Drive by David Lynch, and was originally written on a pump organ we found up in the attic of our rehearsal space. We spent many drunken nights writing stuff on that organ.
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Till Aska is out today independently and can be purchased on Bandcamp.
