Crippled Black Phoenix is a project that seems to be in a constant state of flux. Led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Justin Greaves for the past twenty years or so, the project displays a wealth of diversity not only in its influences (post-rock, progressive, folk, ambient, gothic, etc.) as in the voices that give them expression (here, Belinda Kordic, Ryan Patterson, and Justin Storms) or even its releases and concepts (two years ago, the double album The Wolf Changes Its Fur But Not Its Nature + Horrific Honorifics Number Two combined new recordings of old tracks with covers).
The multifaceted and diverse nature of the project, conceived from the outset as a fluid, poly-headed entity, makes it both fascinating... and, at times, difficult to follow, given how flashes of genius can sit alongside tracks that are harder to digest. Sceaduhelm, however, promises to be more focused, more introspective and devoid of convoluted narrative concepts, refocusing instead on the personal.
Let’s start with the question that’s on everybody’s minds: how do you pronounce it? Well, ‘shadow helm’ – there you go. It’s Old English; the word appears in the epic poem Beowulf. Greaves explains that it has a dual meaning: it can be seen as a world shrouded in darkness or as a protective veil. Crippled Black Phoenix, as always, looks outwards with its music dedicated to the excluded, the forgotten and the despised, as well as inwards towards the personal and intimate. Sceaduhelm speaks of exhaustion, grief and institutional violence, blending the social, the political and the personal.
You quickly find yourself swept into a dark world where the management of tension lies at the heart of the album: contained, it rumbles before a few rare, freer outbursts (Ravenettes and its haunting chorus, which comes straight after the anguished post-rock of One Man Wall of Death, or the theatrical melancholy of Under the Eye, whose spectres come to refresh us after the hits that are Vampire Grave and Colder and Colder). Crippled Black Phoenix couldn’t care less about time and plays with it: the album runs for 66 minutes, after all!
In recent years, Greaves has approached his compositions not only with a newfound spontaneity but also with more overtly darker tendencies, somewhere between gothic rock and nocturnal folk. This is even more evident here, as seen in the elegiac laments of Things Start Falling Apart (Justin Storms’ vocals sometimes remind Dávid Makó’s The Devil’s Trade!) or the hypnotic eight minutes of No Epitaph / The Precipice, whose rough, dusty coffin-like atmosphere evolves from folk minimalism into a more tortured and heavier rock.
As usual, it’s rich. Too rich? Whilst our listening habits tend to turn music into a fast-consumption product, Crippled Black Phoenix pulls out all the stops and presents us with a work that can at times feel overwhelming. We’re certainly not complaining. The samples act as a binding agent, adding their ghostly, cinematic touch as we journey through atmospheric hallucinations, occult incantations (Hollows End) or an irresistible gothic rock hit (Vampire Grave), which bats raised on the black blood of the Sisters of Mercy or the Fields of the Nephilim will savour with the requisite shivers.
So when Beautiful Destroyer starts – a superb finale with blues-rock riffs, echoes of Bauhaus and sinister drums setting a funeral-procession rhythm – we look back on those 66 minutes. Admittedly, it’s a long listen. But it’s absolutely brilliant! Crippled Black Phoenix flouts the rules, the labels, the pigeonholes that are far too narrow to contain all their ideas. With Greaves and his bandmates, the music lives freely. Perhaps Sceaduhelm, with its more unapologetic darkness, will nevertheless find a more attentive ear than usual on our little website! Thanks to its abundant creativity and an unconfined approach that aligns with a necessary message, Sceaduhelm may be tortuous and lose a few impatient listeners along the way, but its dark treasures are priceless.
