Lista de los grupos Atmospheric Black Ruined (KOR) The Haunted House

*I want to say that I will not refer to this band by the name Spirit of Metal does. Their label and all other official sources refer to them as Pyha, which is the Korean word for Ruined. It's only fitting and proper respect to call a band by its actual name.

There is no opening silence or fade-in for Pyha’s depressive/suicidal black metal album, The Haunted House. The intro track guts you with a fierce roar of intensely lo-fi buzz from the get-go. The guitar tone is like a monstrous sandstorm; dry, rough and hot. The warmth of the sound gives a sort of different feel of desolation than the cold-forest worlds of Darkthrone and the like. After a somewhat awkward fade-out of the intro, the intense heat of the album plunges the listener into a bleak, barren world where the life is sucked out of vegetation by fierce wind-riding howls and tortured screams.

The album opens with long, drawn out notes, ringing out like drone music. Even the sudden break in the guitar wall to reveal soft levels of chiming keyboard notes seems reminiscent of the start-stop power dynamic used in drone that makes it feel as if the ground has been pulled out from under the listener. This kind of variance from the standard formula of depressive/suicidal black metal that draws me in so much to Pyha’s début. Sure, the mid-tempo drums that come in after the cleanly-played interlude do standardize things a bit, but as the album progresses, new elements are brought into the mix, such as clean background vocalizations in Song of the Elderly or the bizarre choice to let the drum machine lead in Hyungga is a Tangled Story (part three) do wonders to draw Pyha out of ordinary DSBM. Even the use of drum machine, which I usually don't like in releases like this, plays a part in the strange lurking sound of the album. Of course, the songs are all structurally very simplistic, relying on a handful of riffs and a few crucial shifts throughout to anchor the listener's attention. The songs don't strive to be very long though, which in this case is a very thankful deviation. The musician behind Pyha was only fourteen at the time of recording, most likely developing without influence of a local metal scene, and as a result of that, strange decisions are being made and the music in Haunted House doesn't rigidly follow convention as a result. Most of the time, these decisions are really quite beneficial in giving the album strength. Simple touches of keyboard here and there, or the two synthetic instrumental tracks (Hyungga II and Seomak) give the music dimension and make it all the more vicious when the guitars return and blow the listener down again. The trick of juxtaposition is very powerful here and doesn’t quite follow the cliché of generic atmosphere filler of other bands of the sort.

The best thing about these elements is the understanding of “less is more”. The ghostly, clean vocals I mentioned before are only used for two tracks (Song of the Elderly and The End of Hyungga), and that’s just fine, especially since they are used differently between the two songs. The singing reminds me quite a bit of Japanese Noh theatre, except for pitch of voice (yes, I know it’s cliché to intermix different Asian cultures, but I honestly don’t know what else to compare it to). In Song of the Elderly, the combination of clean voice with the rough, hideous screaming and melancholy guitar notes do a great job in weaving a very strong, sorrowful atmosphere. It’s interesting also how the clean voice gradually overtakes the rough vocals and even peaks the microphone until the levels distort the voice into something nearly sub-human. In End of Hyungga, the clean singing is used alternately with a combination of screaming and a type of deep growling that matches the ominous integrity of many funeral doom vocalists. In this way, both styles can stand alone and the effect is similar, but not identical, to that of Song of the Elderly. Also very important is the fact that the album isn't long beyond reason. Clocking in at thirty-three minutes, I find that the moments that started the album aren't lost or alienated from the moments that end it, as is often the case when the start and finish of DSBM albums are separated by an hour or more of run-time.

There are a few very minor things that I do take issue with throughout the album. Most of these issues stem from what I was talking about before with the musician’s gaps in knowledge or separation from a metal scene, but at some points this becomes detrimental. For example, the awkward fade out of the intro song. When the second track kicks it, it sounds almost the same as the into did, which makes me feel that the two songs could have easily meshed into one track without any loss of momentum. Also, after the cleanly-played interlude of the same track, there’s a cut in the music for just an instant that suggests that the song is stitched together from two takes. During this interlude, there’s a whispered spoken-word segment where it’s clear that the vocalist is too close to the mike. Ultimately these moments are little more than blips when compared to the entire album, and fortunately those types of errors disappear after that interlude. The album only gets better from there, its forward momentum carrying the listener through atmospheres that only deepen with each track. I’ve heard the album is meant to tell a story of Korea’s continuing tradition of compulsory military service and raging nationalism, but even without knowing the lyrics, the emotion is clear and effective.

The Haunted House has direction—it doesn't blindly stumble through black metal tropes with a bunch of interchangeable tracks. It takes the listener on a sort of descent, from the blistering guitars of the opening track to the sombre melancholy of the closer. Pyha is certainly a band that has earned my interest and has proven that they are not merely a gimmick of mystique from a surprising place. I almost dread trying to listen to their later recordings because I feel like the sweet spot captured in the music on Haunted House can’t possibly be repeated, especially when it was recorded years before being picked up and released by a record label that the band is still connected to. Whether I decide to listen to the band’s other material or not, Haunted House has certainly earned a memorable place in my mind for depressive/suicidal black metal.

Recommended tracks: “Song of the Elderly” and “Hyungga’s End”.