Five years after the release of Hearts of No Light, Swiss avant garde experimentalists SCHAMMASCH return with the follow up, The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean – set for release via Prosthetic Records on October 25.
Originally conceived as a collection of shorter releases the idea behind The Maldoror Chants series has developed into a more elaborate shape and structure. This upcoming release will be the second in an ongoing series of works by SCHAMMASCH that draws from Les Chants de Maldoror – one of the 19th century’s most fascinating literary works which would later become part of the foundation of the surrealist movement. The first SCHAMMASCH release inspired by the book was 2017’s The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite. The poetic novel was written by Comte de Lautréamont (also known as Isidore Lucien Ducasse) and published in the late 1860s. His writings have proved influential to other writers, musicians and visual artists over the years – including the likes of Dalí and Magritte.
For The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean, SCHAMMASCH have specifically drawn inspiration from sections of the text that serve as a hymn to the splendour of the ocean as well as a provocative comparison between ocean and humanity, sardonically highlighting the latter’s inferiority. Finding a kinship to the evocative, melancholic sense of vastness, loneliness and societal aversion conjured up in the text, SCHAMMASCH’s chief songwriter, C.S.R embraced the book’s spirit and surreal lucidity during the persevering difficulties of the past years, resulting in personal growth and, yet again, a transformation of SCHAMMASCH’s artistic horizon. Old Ocean inherits an underlying sense of a longing; a longing to step outside of human society, to wash away the profanities and petty struggles – to dissolve into the unfathomable yet somewhat peaceful void of the sea, vanishing into the great unknown.
Sonically, the album charts the continued evolution in the sound of SCHAMMASCH; dark, gothy undertones rise often to the surface with sultry spoken word taking centre stage at various points. A pulsating, monolithic rhythm flows through the album with their atmospheric take on post-black metal providing a majestic backdrop – replete with a love for detail and the use of unusual elements like accordions, classical orchestration or industrial soundscapes – to explore existential thoughts on humanity and its ambivalent relationship to nature. Ethereal layers are delicately applied with the additional vocals of Kathrine Shepard (Sylvaine) on They Have Found Their Master and Image of the Infinite.
As has increasingly become the case, many of the album’s production duties were carried out by C.S.R himself, maintaining his introspective gaze on the work under creation. Additional engineering was handled by Michael Zech (The Ruins of Beverast, Secrets of the Moon), with further engineering, mixing and mastering courtesy of Markus Stock (Empyrium, The Vision Bleak). As with The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite, the artwork for the release was created by Mexican surrealist Héctor Pineda, with the layout completed by C.S.R’s own Eye of Saros.
Whilst the music and lyrics that make up The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean unfurled over the past decade-plus before being committed to tape, the resulting album is a vital and fresh sounding addition to the SCHAMMASCH discography. It may just be their most coherent work to date; an opus rich in creativity, leaving much to discover.