Day: April 11, 2019

None is the name of an atmospheric black project of which little is known other than the fact that its provenance is the always fertile US soil for these sounds. Damp Chill Of Life is the third full length that, like the ones published in 2017 and 2018, was punctually released on April 11, a date that obviously has a precise meaning for this musician (in fact, it’s probably a single project). None‘s work is of absolute importance for its optimal combination of the darkest and at the same time most atmospheric components of black metal, in which the tendency of depressive matrix is in fact diluted by melodic openings that refer to Cascadian bands, but everything is then strengthened by a non-trivial writing and always full of emotional tension. Damp Chill Of Life is about three quarters of an hour long, with very long tracks like the title track, with its dramatic pace punctuated by the typical desperate scream, or Cease, with its ambient beginning that opens in the second part in a painful and crystalline melodic breath. The ambient component is always present as well as flashes of folk given by a remarkable work of acoustic guitar: Damp Chill of Life is an album in which passages of enormous emotional impact are masterfully alternated to others more rarefied and reflective without everything ever appearing fragmented and here stands out the skill, also executive, of our anonymous but excellent protagonist. A production above average for the standards of the genre closes to perfection a circle within which it is possible to preserve with care this album that is closed by another splendid and suffered monument to despair as A Chance I’d Never Have. Fortunately, contradicting the title, a project like None has had the opportunity to emerge in all its beauty in recent years thanks to the support of a label like Hypnotic Dirge, like others capable of bringing to light magnificent realities that otherwise would have been destined to languish in the maze of the most hidden and inaccessible underground.

2019 – Hypnotic Dirge Records