Style: avant-garde black metal, brutal prog, zeuhl, third stream, blackgaze (I swear it’s instrumental despite having published lyrics)
Recommended for fans of: Liturgy, Magma, Sadness
Country: United States-TX
Release date: 21 June 2024
To name one’s band after a Xenakis ballet places critical pressure and expectation on oneself. Xenakis’s Kraanerg (meaning accomplished action in Greek) marries his stochastic, electroacoustic music with his orchestral works, interspersed with twenty-two periods of silence—all set to dance in the original performances. Like all his compositions, it’s dense, mathematical, and intellectually challenging, at the vanguard of 20th century art music. As far as “popular” musics go, black metal is undoubtedly among the most progressive, yet for Kraanerg to draw explicit comparisons to Xenakis on a debut album should set an expectation for compositional, performative, and conceptual brilliance that few metal acts have ever achieved.
Strikingly, before hearing a note Kraanerg makes their ambitious name seem reasonable by enlisting D.L. (of Kostnatěni, my 2023 Prog Subway album of the year) on guitar duties and the legendary Markov Soroka (Tchornobog, Aureole, Drown) handling production, bringing together two of the most creative minds in the metalsphere. Yet despite the inclusion of this black metal guitar deity, it is Nat Bergrin’s piano and synths along with Danny Kamins’s saxophone which dominate the sound, a cacophonous duo who Soroka fills the entire acoustic space with. Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun is built with Bergrin’s piano as a foundation, similar to acts like Bríi, Wreche, or Liturgy, leaving only the blast beats to make the album a “metal” one; however, the piano’s timbre naturally takes Kraanerg just as much through the worlds of third stream and brutal prog as through metal, brimming with a simultaneous intensity and laid-back haziness. The sounds emanating from their keys are mysterious and magical—a nostalgic, gorgeous emotional intensity with the tone and chord progressions.
The successes of Kraanerg lie in the overwhelming sections where layers of distortion, eerily beautiful keyboards, drums, and sax raucously meet. The title of track two, “The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone),” succinctly describes its emotional and musical weight, the recording nearly unable to contain all the noise the band create in a euphoric transcendence. The blast beats provide a feeling of ascension as described in the manifesto of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy), and the piece colorfully explodes. The saxophone leads also provide a creative edge to Kraanerg with a glowing tone that feels natural as the melodic figurehead of Kraanerg’s subtly volatile style, adding the jazzy zeuhlishness which makes the project so strange.
All the piano and sax prevents me from hearing much of D.L.’s guitar playing which seems only to add a distorted texture throughout the entirety of Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun. And disappointingly, I can’t pinpoint any notable violin parts despite Daniel Cho being credited with a performance, and, confusingly, all three tracks have lyrics yet I can’t figure out where the vocals are except for in an unnecessary spoken whisper section in “Here the Ground Is a Spandrel.” I don’t doubt Soroka as a producer—he has far too much pedigree in this style and others—and the production perfectly encapsulates the album and its odd glamor, yet it also stifles the album into a maddening wall of pretty noise, drowning out as many layers of instrumentation as I can parse. Moreover, while always pleasant and slightly strange, the melodies still manage to be a tad trite, full of blackgaze cliches—I definitely hear influence from Sadness or Trhä. Even with Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun’s successful capacity for occasional transcendence, the journey it meanders through detaches me, and I can’t quite figure out how to stick with the music. I am no stranger to weird music and Kraanerg’s aesthetic choices are for-the-most-part convincing, but something is slightly off with the album in addition to the intentional weirdness: my best bet is a lack of focused songwriting. While that occasionally works, I think it hinders Kraanerg from making an impression in its oppressive noise.
Kraanerg certainly push forward what I’ve heard in the strangeness of acts like Trhä with the jazziness and production quality, but they haven’t hit a masterpiece yet. Bergrin’s vision is impressive, and as always I respect their ambition, but Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun frustrated me more than I’d like to admit for a genre I’m quite comfortable in, but less in the fun abstruse way and more in the this is almost the next-best-thing-since-sliced-bread way. Perhaps in a follow up, a tad more Xenakis influence could be the key.
Recommended tracks: The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone)
You may also like: Kostnatěni, Tchornobog, Cicada the Burrower, Wreche, Papangu, Botanist, El Mantis, Bríi, Trhä
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Not Music – Bandcamp | Facebook
Kraanerg is:
– Nat Bergrin (composition, piano, synths, electronics, additional guitars)
– Angel Garcia (drums, vocals)
– D.L. (guitars)
– Danny Kamins (saxophone)
– Daniel Cho (violin)
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