Feature on Schrei Aus Stein from Metal Psalter website | 2010
****
“I decided to try a route that landed me on top of a pretty gnarly notch that I had no business attempting alone, especially in the snow…I literally saw nobody after leaving the trailhead area. It was just me and the rocks and blowing snow at 13,000 feet.”
Black metal is proving itself more versatile an aesthetic than its corpse-painted purists would have you believe possible. While ambient music has always found a place within the genre from as early as Burzum and Beherit, it wasn’t until only a few years ago that bands such as Velvet Cacoon and Wolves in the Throne group bridged the gap between post-rock’s Eno-ish ambience and black metal’s harmonic hypnotisms, finding common ground in a pensive melodicism and revolutionizing the genre.
In the short time since Dextronaut took the underground by storm, we’ve seen tens of bands taking more liberty in expanding black metal beyond it’s Satanic and war trappings: Procer Veneficus developed the Velvet Cacoon sound, bands like Alcest and Circle of Ouroborus began to tinker with post-punk and shoegaze.
At the cutting edge of this movement stands Colorado’s Schrei aus Stein (“Scream of Stone”). Named after the 1991 Herzog film, Schrei aus Stein is the newest adventure of Ross Hagen, a mainstay of the Colorado music scene and helmsman of ambient group Encomiast, avant-metal weirdos Spawn of the Matriarch, and krautrock/folk-fusion act Liebezeit.
“I almost didn't record this as a new project. When I sent early demos around (one of which apparently took on a brief second life as a fake Velvet Cacoon EP) I still hadn't decided whether to make it a new thing or just a really weird Encomiast record. I had after all done bathed in sunlight a few years ago, which is basically an acoustic post-rock record. But I knew that I was never going to make an album like bathed in sunlight again and I felt like the Schrei aus Stein style was promising enough that it might take its own trajectory apart from Encomiast...
But I think the main thing I brought over [from Encomiast] was a concern for balanced motion...not moving too fast and letting parts breathe a little before adding something new or moving on to a new section.”
And breathe it does. Schrei aus Stein’s debut album Talus (out on Starlight Temple Society) is a beautiful, expansive work: five tracks of shimmering guitars and ambient keyboard washes, epic song structures, and meditative melodies. Listening to Talus is like standing on the highest point in the world, face-to-face with the sky, stillness blanketing you like the snow blanketing the rocks at your feet.
“I guess there's a certain stillness I was trying to evoke with the more "ambient" aesthetic, so tons of rhythmic changes or guitar heroics were right out. I feel like that drove much of the composition. But I also feel think some of the more active things about the alpine experience are present as well. The wind up there is brutal, and there's a certain "one-foot-in-front-of-the-other" mentality...along with the difficult spots where you wonder why the trek seemed like such a good idea in the first place. I hope I captured a little of that unsettling quality in the music as well.”
Talus is unsettling. Ghostly voices rasping through the blizzard and avalanches of percussion bring to mind Schrei aus Stein’s black metal heritage. In the ongoing metal culture war, the line is clearly drawn by the purists between “true” “black metal ist krieg” and those such as Wolves in the Throne Room and Velvet Cacoon interpreting the sound differently. You needn’t search too hard on the internet for those who criticize post-rock- and shoegaze-influenced black metal for not buying into the black metal ideology, calling its purveyors poseurs, hipsters, or any number of reductive labels which are less about the music and more about the lack of spikes and corpse paint. But Schrei aus Stein proudly joins the club of musicians who aren’t afraid to situate classic black metal elements in new contexts. Classic black metal acts like Immortal have for decades found inspiration in their climate and geography: experiences in the brutal winters of Norway found metaphor in evocative tales of demons and kingdoms. Schrei aus Stein evokes the experience of climbing the cliffs and glaciers of Colorado, being one with the rock and snow, also finding a voice in black metal’s classic language.
“I like black metal…because it's often structurally minimalistic but tonally maximalistic. In the right hands, it just sounds like mountains and cliffs to me, too massive to take in as a totality but full of interesting details you can focus on in succession. I don't know if that's an association I make because of all the themes and album art over the years from folks like Immortal and Summoning, or listening to black metal while driving through the mountains, but it's definitely there…
I've actually always felt that black metal has a tranquil side to it. The first black metal album I ever truly listened to was Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk when I was about 18 or so, and the first time I sat down to listen to it...I fell asleep. There's something very hypnotic about the style; all the white noise buzz-picking, blast-beats, and slow-moving harmonies can kind of glaze over everything, even if there is somebody shrieking over it. As a maker of ambient music, I latched onto that immediately.”
Schrei aus Stein is poised to make waves in the metal world. There’s an epic grandeur, a majestic radiance to Talus that puts it on the cutting edge of black metal and the standard-bearer for the genre’s future.
“I have started work on some new material. Preliminary ideas are holding up, so we'll see where it goes from there. Right now it's sounding a bit slower and more methodical, probably because I have a better idea of what I'm doing this time around. This band will never play live, but I might hit up some friends for guest spots on the next record…
I think I'm happy with it just being a little thing I do that a few people might enjoy. I don't think I want the pressure of feeling like I have to make a lasting contribution. It's not that I'm not somewhat ambitious, but if Talus does wind up being significant, it'll be out of my hands.”
Humble indeed, Ross underestimates Talus’s potential impact. Truly an occasion for celebration, it’s an album fans across the board will love. Ross recommends you listen to Talus through headphones, in late afternoon, with beer that’s big and hoppy with an ABV over 7%. Sage advice. Pick up Talus through Starlight Temple Society (for ridiculously cheap!) and see for yourself.