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Review: The Black Monolith - Thee I Invoke

Vlad

Album: Thee I Invoke

Label: Self-released

Release date: December 2024



One of the joys of writing about music is giving exposure to upcoming artists who are still largely unknown to the wider world. Now, I'd love to open this review by giving a brief presentation of The Black Monolith, but the trouble is that I wouldn't have all that much to say. All that is known about this mysterious entity is that it hails from Athens, Greece, has self-released a handful of full-length albums over the past two years, and makes ritual dark ambient with strong industrial and noise influences. Whether the project is young or old, experienced or not, or even the creation of a single musician or several of them is impossible to know. Perhaps that's how it should be - sometimes it's better to get the ego out of the way and let the music speak for itself.


And speak it definitely does. Unlike most releases that are simply a collection of tracks, Thee I Invoke has a very strong sense of structure, without perhaps going as far as becoming a bona-fide concept album. The opening track starts in a rather harsh fashion, with an industrial noise sequence that slowly reveals its subtler details as the listener gets used to the compositional method. What seems like an impenetrable wall of sound slowly reveals its true nature, as the ears get used to the darkness, much like eyes would. The aforementioned wall of noise is actually packed with subtler details, such as the pulsating deep bass rhythm and carefully arranged industrial elements that add density to the seemingly monotonous nature of the music. The sound itself is difficult to describe, but in terms of atmosphere, I would approximate it by saying that it falls somewhere between Sunn O))) and CLAVICVLA. As the album progresses, the hard outer shell is peeled off layer by layer towards a somewhat softer (but no less dark) core, revealing ever more intricate details. By the middle of the album, the atmosphere becomes a lot more introspective than initially suggested, which is best exemplified by the fifth (and longest) track, whose Greek name I will not subject to machine translation, but which evokes deep immersion and introspection, and is in fact one of those 10-plus-minute tracks that feels much shorter than it actually is. The final minutes of the album act like a catalogue of all the elements used throughout its duration, causing a somewhat contradictory feeling of satisfaction and unease at the same time before the album winds down into a cathartic release with (gasp!) hints of melody.


Ultimately, Thee I Invoke manages to conjure quite an atmosphere and showcases a very versatile compositional spirit (or spirits?) behind The Black Monolith. While I do feel that further refinement of vision is needed for the project to produce a proper masterpiece, Thee I Invoke is nevertheless a very competent piece of music on the harsher end of the ritual dark ambient spectrum, and original enough to warrant repeated listens. I'm definitely eager to see in which direction the monolith will progress from here.


Rating: 8/10

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