Album Review: Göden, Vale of the Fallen
Darkness and headphone-ready immersion pervade the second full-length from Göden, the offshoot project steered by former Winter guitarist Stephen Flam. And maybe that’s not a huge surprise after the band’s Svart-issued 2020 debut, Beyond Darkness (review here), set itself to the task of vivid, sometimes horrifying worldmaking, but Vale of the Fallen, in addition to continuing Flam‘s collaboration with vocalist Vas Kallas (Hanzel und Gretyl) and keyboardist Tony Pinnisi (also Winter), drummer Jason Frantz and violinist Margaret Murphy step back in to contribute to what feels like a more solidified lineup this time around. Where the debut was spliced through with dialogue-driven mythos across eight “Manifestations” and was 76 minutes long, Vale of the Fallen dwells differently in its 42-minute/10-track stretch, with “Manifestation IX” picking up the narrative where it left off and the dramaturge there combining with a deep focus on instrumental atmospherics throughout, whether that’s the violin-and-birdsong “The Divine” at the outset, the cinematic creeper drone that emerges from “Rings of Saturn” or the standalone-string resonance of Murphy‘s echo on the penultimate “The Requiem.”
The last of those follows “Manifestation IX” and brings to mind Celtic Frost in its title, and the more conceptual end of Tom G. Warrior‘s work is still relevant as an influence, but the palette has expanded on Vale of the Fallen, and the album is quick to demonstrate that in the industrial-style impact(s) of “In the Vale of the Fallen,” which finds Kallas‘ rasp topping a churn reminiscent of Author & Punisher as a preface to the closer “Majestic Symphony,” which bounces with low end beat and a more melodic/semi-spoken vocal in its ambient verse. Pinnisi‘s keyboard features as a crucial element in the mix of “In the Vale of the Fallen,” “Urania” and “Black Vortex” as well early on, conveying the bleakness of atmosphere at the same time it fleshes out the melody. A particularly crushing nod in “Death Magus” feels born out of more YOB-riffed cosmic-doom impulses; it’s not quite psychedelic, but there’s some ethereal reach happening in Flam‘s guitar, which is the root element of the material across the record’s span and of Göden more broadly, though as a group, they push against that notion in the bassy, keyboardy roll at the outset of “Black Vortex” and the double-kick lumber of low end beneath Kallas‘ throaty gnashing in “Zero” later on. With Flam also handling bass duties, “Zero” repeats its message of nothingness and lands on “zilch” twice — once headed into the bridge and again at the finish — for what feels like fair enough emphasis.
All the while, the air surrounding Vale of the Fallen is thick, severe. Even with a half-hour-plus chopped from the runtime and one dialogue-based inclusion as opposed to eight, the sophomore Göden outing retains the sense of actively challenging convention that in part defined the debut. It clearly does not believe in genre boundaries between doom, dark industrial and theatrical metal, and more than that, it is uncompromising in the interpretations of its own ideas of what the songs should be doing and how they interact. Whether it’s in one of the already-noted interludes or in the harsh cast of “Black Vortex” as the longest piece here at 7:10, Vale of the Fallen brings vivid, deep-grey-swirling mood as a matter of priority, and the combination of elements between Flam, Pinnisi and Kallas will feel definitive here for anyone who heard Beyond Darkness. That is to say, the newer LP is built on the accomplishments of its predecessor. It retains the spirit of experimentalism, be it in “Manifestation IX,” the noise of “Rings of Saturn” or the daringly uptempo push of “Majestic Symphony,” but comes across as more grounded in its foundation because, from the standpoint of its creators, it likely is. Göden took what they felt worked last time and used it as the basis for a to-this-point progression that is both palpably individual and that sounds like it still has more places to go.
To wit, the industrial metal dissonance, the continued narrative or thematic thread, and the abiding grimness to the proceedings here. There may or may not be more to the Göden story — I honestly don’t know — but the band sound more coherent, more intentional, in what they’re doing this time out, and rather than take away from the experimental feel, it adds to it and lets the material reside in a different space. The sounds remain extreme in their way. It’s not the bludgeoning of death metal or the searing char of genre-adherent black metal, but the songs are delivered with force and the unconventional ethic is in itself an extreme position, dug into the creation — the manifestation, if you prefer — of this lurching malevolence that Göden so readily foster. It’s true that in terms of the basic listening experience, Vale of the Fallen is more accessible than Beyond Darkness, but the scale at which they’re operating is subject to the same reality-warping sensibility as the songwriting itself, and as they find new avenues of expression for the stories they’re telling, their sound is likewise richer and less predictable than it would be if Vale of the Fallen operated more directly in answer to the methodology and structure of Beyond Darkness.
And honestly, that it doesn’t makes it an even more fitting follow-up than if Göden had simply done the same thing over and again, since so much of what the band bring to (dim, fog-dampened) light throughout Vale of the Fallen is the refusal to compromise in terms of the overarching vision — easy to read it as Flam‘s, but I won’t downplay anyone else’s contributions here — of what Göden are. Hearing what it brings to the later nod of “Black Vortex,” the interludes, and so on, I wouldn’t be surprised if the violin continued to be a growing presence in their sound when and if another full-length should be realized, but beyond that, should the personnel involved remain consistent, Göden are pointed in setting boundaries far in the distance, and the feeling of foreboding, the looming threat, the payoff, and the component mythology are all the more vivid for that. They carry an artistry dangerously close to unique.
