Alexander von Meilenwald, sole originator, songwriter and performer of all instruments for The Ruins of Beverast is the most creative artist in black metal today. Before examining his latest work, a brief overview of his history is in order. His official musical career in heavy metal began when he was just a teenager, as he and Sveinn von Hackelnberg pounded their way out of obscurity in Nordrhein-Westfallen. Fast-forward about twenty years — Meilenwald’s Nagelfar, for which he obliterated the skins, bowed out proudly and successfully after its release of Virus West. Hackelnberg is now the proud owner of Ván Records, and together they have been directly involved with the likes of Verdunkeln, Urfaust, Truppensturm, Graupel, and the highly underrated Kermania, just to name a few. Reads like a list of who’s who for that part of the world, doesn’t it? Eventually, though, many true artists reach a point at which their only collaborators are the frightening realities that exist in the darkest and least explored corridors of their minds. Drilling that far into the mind and excavating whatever nightmares we have either suppressed, or have simply let grow on their own, is something that many of us will never do. Alexander von Meilenwald not only does this, but he transforms them into pure art by carefully crafting notes, words and dissonance that ensnares his listeners inside a maelstrom of his own ideas and then violently carries them away. Blood Vaults – The Blazing Gospel of Heinrich Kramer is more than just his latest album — It’s one more piece that leads us further to understanding the whole. Thus, in order to fully grasp this next piece, it is important to become acquainted with the The Ruins of Beverast‘s previous works as well.
“Inhale your schizophrenia. Suffer from your faded mind. Unlock the shrine. Release me. Will I kill us? (Will you kill us?) Will I release us? (Will you release us?)… You will drivel and howl at this merciless rain. These doors will close for you again.”
Unlock the Shrine, the first full-length and also the first release for Ván Records (what a way to start, eh?), was disturbingly claustrophobic, leaving listeners baffled by the way it released such intense feelings of paranoid schizophrenia from their minds. The album plays like a tangible nightmare in the mind of one who is utterly left in darkness just before there is no air left to breathe and the walls of their insanity come crashing down around them. As one of my favorite writers stated in his review of said album, “Not only does this one-man project push the black metal envelope, he finds out where the envelope lives, follows it home, and torments it until it grievously hangs itself in the bathroom. This is the type of album that could swoop down on your sunny afternoon picnic and turn it into an apocalyptic hallucination featuring schizophrenic mumblings, weeping choirs, frenzied crowds, and burning, toppled buildings.” Part of the power of The Ruins of Beverast comes from the fact that is a true one-man operation, and further backs up the argument that self-indulgence is mandatory when 100% pure creativity is to be expressed. Perhaps the most accurate summation of Alexander von Meilenwald’s first effort is alluded to in an Ed Wood audio sample that is featured in the album’s title track and comes right before Unlock the Shrine‘s central riff, “One is always considered mad, when one discovers something that others cannot grasp.” Another unique aspect of this entirely-too-fucked-up-to-fully-comprehend black metal project is that it’s so self-defecating. It makes the expression “inner-turmoil” seem like a blissful walk through nature. And yet, it brilliantly prepares us for the work that came immediately thereafter.
“I am: The wandering moon and sun… The rabbit and the snake… The virgin and the rapist… The church and the graveyard… The storms and the rainbows… The soul and the flesh… The rotten lower skin… The sin and altruism.”
The band’s sophomore release took the same nightmare and gave it a sense of purpose. Where Unlock the Shrine seemed as if it was written by a soul about to reach its end, Rain upon the Impure was purifying, edifying and spiritually awakening… while still dispalying equal if not greater amounts of schizophrenia. Where the former is dense and jam-packed with horrifying emotions that assault the listener from all directions, the latter is expansive, and gives the listener’s mind a sense of purpose and understanding by, if only for an instant, allowing them to comprehend infinity. Where Shrine was deafeningly loud, Rain makes its listeners stretch their eardrums as much as humanly possible in order to grasp the unsuspected noises and haunting melodies that ooze out of every second of the album. Unfortunately, some fans simply have never been able to get over the album’s production values — A quality that others have grown to accept as Rain upon the Impure‘s most brilliant attribute — It’s a true double-edged sword. The chorus of “Soil of the Incestuous” sums up the overall central theme of this piece of the puzzle: “The path of the mind’s eye shall never bifurcate.” Whatever part of Alexander von Meilenwald that wrote Unlock the Shrine depicted a tormented soul that was wounded and set to self-destruct at any moment. Rain upon the Impure, however, gave that same being a grand sense of self-acceptance. Personally, comprehending what I consider to be his Meisterwerk is no less daunting than pontificating on the mysteries the universe, or on the fallacies of time and space. It is the most cumbersome piece of art I have ever attempted to grasp, yet never have I been so rewarded by such a challenge.
“I ceremonially predicted your distress. I raised this stone as a ghastly memorial. It has not been visited by the sun. Nor been carved by an iron knife. Let no man lay it bare. While the waning moon wanders. Let not misled men remove it.”
So what was left Alexander von Meilenwald to do now that his project has become self-actualized? Destroy Christianity, that’s what! Isn’t that what all black metal musicians do best? Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite was the definitive breakthrough album for the German one-man project. And would you just look at that album cover!? Fuck the corpse paint and church burnings, let’s draw a picture of Noah’s Ark and summarize Judeo-Christian historical figures into the album title, which I will not apologize for saying twice: Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite. Aside from bringing a much more accessible, cleaned-up production and direct, doom metal passages to the table, Alexander von Meilenwald proved on his third album that he is just as much a master of language as he is a master of songwriting and musical instrumentation. Foulest Semen is filled with very deep biblical themes (not to mention Latin), mainly centered around the Old Testament. He doesn’t just blasphemy Judeo-Christianity (or should I say, the movement’s history, as opposed to its teachings that have actually never been followed by the movement itself), he intellectually rips it to shreds and exposes it as the epicenter for human hypocrisy that it has always been. Songs such as “God’s Ensanguined Bestiaries,” “Kain’s Countenance Fell,” and “Arcane Pharmakon Messiah” keep this central theme in heavily in mind throughout the entire album.
If I had to flatter one of my favorite colleagues in the world of musical penmanship, I would have to say there’s not a more accurate description of Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite than this quote by Jim Brandon, as he gave the album a perfect score and rated it best album of the year back in 2009: “…Black metal at it’s absolute peak. Majestic, sophisticated, revolting. As beautiful as it is deadly… metal has never sounded so nihilistically gorgeous. Supreme.” Since the release of Foulest, the enigmatic Alexander von Meilenwald decided to turn The Ruins of Beverast into a live performing act (playing guitar and singing alongside Secrets of the Moon‘s Arioch), and if the name of the project alone wasn’t enough to convince listener’s of Alexander von Meilenwald’s loyalty to paganism (“Beverast” is von Meilenwald’s own derivation of the word “Bifröst” influenced by the old Norse term for the bridge between Midgard and Asgard), perhaps the adornment of Mjölnir around his neck at every live concert is. When keeping these things in mind, it should be no surprise that Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite was indeed the most sophisticated example of blasphemy against paganism’s most notorious enemy. Perhaps the overall attitude of the album can best be brought to summation by the recital of the closing lyrics of the song “Blood Vaults II:” “O majestic ironhand of doom, have you received our immolation? Let our deeds bequeath a martial dogma to our descendants: Our despots cleanse(d) the Levant!”
And now, as we prepare to examine Alex’s latest concept, let’s take a trip through time…
“Beware the unsavoury grief of the serpent. Eschew her feeble heart, her juices, her tongue. Thou wouldst follow a siren’s voice through a sea of caustic Absinthe. And with malicious lust inflamed, thou shalt fail, and writhe in hate. Mala ergo mulier ex natura – The female is bitterer than death!”
The year was 1486. Catholic persecution had long-since unleashed itself all-throughout the world, but perhaps one of the most horrifying events was its persecution of “witches” prior to the thirty-years war. Heinrich Kramer, a Catholic clergyman of the Dominican Order and appointed inquisitor, decided to publish what I consider to be one of the most embarrassing and downright evil books the great “Church” had ever associated with its name, the Malleus Maleficarum, or “Hammer of the Witches.” It’s purpose? To reverse scientific findings stating that witchcraft was merely a pagan practice and superstition, to claim that witches were more often women than men (who were required to have sex with Satan in order to bring their witching abilities into fruition), and to create a list of procedures that could discover them and sentence them to death. Now, knowing full-well the Catholic church has always done anything in its power to eliminate the competition (Christian persecution of pagans specifically actually pre-dates this by one thousand years or so), the real question is whether the original writing was an enormous undertaking to get the public further involved in the tribal notion that anyone who wasn’t Catholic is somehow “evil,” or whether it’s simply the work of a fucking madman. Since don’t really know, let’s assume both.
The Malleus Maleficarum states that three elements must be prevalent for witchcraft to exist (the evil-intentioned witch, the help of the devil, and the permission of God), and is consequently divided into three sections. To be brief, the first discusses the existence of the devil, and how he is most powerful when it comes to matters of sexual enticement. According to Malleus, “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.” The second section discusses witches and their recruitment strategies. The concluding section discusses legal matters and how witches could be prosecuted. The whole thing sounds both superstitious and obviously misogynous, but the strange thing is that many Catholic women took place in these prosecutions as well. Regardless of whatever the hell was going through the minds of all of these people involved, the historical facts are as follows: Heinrich Kramer went so far as to suggest both male and female witches practiced infanticide, cannibalism, and… had the ability to steal penises. As a result of this painfully illogical craze, over twelve thousand people were killed during the witch hunts that began with Kramer and ended a few hundred years later.
The latest from The Ruins of Beverast, Blood Vaults – The Blazing Gospel of Heinrich Kramer, is the project’s second true concept album, and understanding its music is no less important than understanding the historicity behind it. Despite the disgusting events that took place around said themes, the album basically plays like a blasphemous celebration of the mind of a religious fanatic and complete madman. Not coincidentally, Blood Vaults is split into three parts, all of which sound like they could only come from the mind of Alexander von Meilenwald himself. Opening track “Daemon” destroys the listener’s eardrums with the same style of ferocity and orgasmic carnage that was displayed on the debut album track “Euphoria when the Bombs Fell.” Then comes the first departure… “Malefica” adds extended, independently-existing organ passages into von Meilenwald’s repertoire. Initially, it makes the overall experience slower, calming and melancholic (especially when the central theme is kept in mind). Latin passages and chants are even more prevalent on Blood Vaults than they were on Foulest Semen, as are the elongated, doom-influenced guitar riffs and marching drums sans the tremolo that used to be prevalent during these moments on previous albums (the conclusion of “Spires, the Wailing City” is damn near trance-inducing). Stylistically, the various elements featured on each track are not necessarily congruent with the album’s three “sections.” Thematically, however, the sections are meant to mirror the attitudes on each chapter of the Malleus Maleficarum, as if the music itself is actually coming from Heinrich Kramer and the listener is trapped inside his warped, fucked-up state of mind. “A Failed Exorcism” is undoubtedly the album’s centerpiece, and displays a stupefyingly vast variety of emotional segments that turn the listening experience into utter catharsis. The only other outside voice featured is that of a woman as she is about to be put to death at the album’s ferocious yet painful conclusion: “I leave to the superior to judge if I am good, And I would break myself before my tormentor would. My silence is not fragile, I shall not shed a tear. Inflamed by my Daemon, no ordeal shall I fear.”
The Ruins of Beverast is one of the most fascinating bands to ever break the surface of the underground, and there’s no telling where Alexander von Meilenwald will go from here. Blood Vaults – The Blazing Gospel of Heinrich Kramer continues a very rich theme of anti-Christian sentiments and blasphemy in glorious fashion. As it stands, all four full-lengths are masterpieces in their own right. Where the first two cause the listener’s mind to turn inward on itself and reflect on its own horrors, the latter two bring very vivid, powerful concepts to light. If the project is a new discovery for you, Blood Vaults is as good a starting point as any, and will no doubt grow after each listen. And so, ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves to become further obsessed with, and possessed by one of the most amazing, and most beautiful minds the world of music has ever known.
