Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Dekadent
Label: Pentacle Music
Release: 2006
Slovenia’s black metal champions Dekadent were founded in 2002 under the name Vigred, with mastermind Artur Felicijan as the sole member. In 2005, a prolific creative streak launched the debut album Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding. The band soon rounded out to a full lineup, signed with the Swiss black metal label SMP (today Pentacle Music), and renamed itself Dekadent. Ever since its release, Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding has been collecting brilliant reviews and rave write-ups from both domestic and foreign media, and it was high time I got my own hands on it.
The title alone tells you this album is a musical manifestation of the changing seasons, the eternal struggle between life and death, light and darkness. Slavic mythology tells of the children of the supreme god Perun: Jarilo, god of fertility, and his sister Morana, goddess of nature and death. Jarilo and Morana were born on New Year’s night, but that very same night Veles carried Jarilo off from his cradle to the underworld, where he raised him as his own. In spring Jarilo returns from the land of the dead, brings spring to the world of the living, and meets his sister Morana again. Summer celebrates their reunion, which brings fertility and a bountiful harvest. After the harvest, Jarilo betrays Morana, who kills him in revenge and sends him back to the underworld. Without Jarilo, Morana, and with her all of nature, withers and freezes, turning into a terrifying goddess of darkness and cold, who dies at the end of the year. The myth says the whole story starts over with the new year, and Artur, who wrote the entire album all by himself, recreates it flawlessly with a superb atmosphere, as if it were nothing. But don’t let my words fool you: Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding is much more than just pagan black metal, and Artur proves it over all forty minutes of the album, starting with the opener Emanation, with its pompous, atmospheric keyboards, ethereal solo guitar and the angelic voice of guest vocalist Valentina Lacovich, who, like the goddess Živa, awakens nature into the new birth of spring. Dissident Dream shows off Artur’s compositional genius down to the last detail, built around a dead simple yet incredibly effective central solo that sounds timeless and otherworldly. Artur’s raw vocals are chilling and brutal, like Morana at the end of the year, yet the fantastic keyboards keep conjuring up an unbelievably magical atmosphere, tender and innocent like the spring that cuts through a dreadful, gloomy winter. Utrip proves that the Slovenian language was practically made for black metal, elevated by Artur’s emotionally charged delivery, while melancholic keyboards and a mournful guitar carry it off into new spheres. With its speed and aggression, Kres is the most classic black metal track on the record, its fiery energy dictating the peak of the year, which the Slavs celebrated with festivities and bonfires. The poetic lyrics read like romantic verse, something even Lord Byron’s “spleen” wouldn’t shy away from. The Divine Penalty is an emotionally charged epic treat, flawlessly led by the raw Artur and ethereal ambient keyboards that sweep you off to new worlds if you just close your eyes. The influence of seventies prog rock is clearly audible in the guitar solos and the keyboard sound. Vigred, with its energetic, bouncy rhythm, nicely illustrates the birth of spring, when Jarilo and Morana meet again, played out fantastically in the chorus by the interplay between Valentina’s gentle, fragile voice and Artur’s brutal growling. The already superb Vigred is lifted even higher by an excellent arpeggio solo and a bass guitar that couldn’t have pushed its way to the front at a better moment. The sorrowful yet powerful interplay of keyboards and delicate guitar lines in the intro of Seasonal Bleeding feels like the slow death of spring and summer, the end of birth and the arrival of death and merciless winter. We get a spectacular finish with Blind Finale, where Artur proves his compositional genius one last time and, in seven minutes, flawlessly captures the sentimentality of the seasons – the birth of spring, the playfulness of summer, the melancholy of autumn and the darkness of winter – and locks them into the timelessness of this brilliant composition.
Without exaggeration, I can say in closing that Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding is some of the best that black metal as a whole has to offer. It’s a standout achievement for Slovenia in every respect and an album of duality – endless beauty and merciless aggression. Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding is birth and it is death, it is spring and it is winter… And it is Vigred, eternal like Jarilo and Morana.
Lineup
Artur Felicijan – vocals, all instruments
Valentina Lacovich – guest vocals
Production
Artur Felicijan
Track list
1. Emanation 01:25
2. Dissident Dream 05:01
3. Utrip 04:34
4. Kres 04:26
5. The Divine Penalty 05:13
6. Vigred 05:10
7. Seasonal Bleeding 05:45
8. Blind Finale 07:13
