Review Summary: Introducing: Blue metal
The colour blue is exceedingly rare in natural life. Reserved only for the most unique species, it is a colour that grants a certain level of grandeur and mystery to its holder. Similarly, the symbolic importance of blue cannot be understated in the natural world. When primitive man looked to God, he saw blue sky. When he looked across unknowable oceans, he was met only with rippling blue. Life and the afterlife, bound together on Earth by one common factor - the colour blue. However, there exists something that vastly outshines the rarity and significance of blue in nature. It is the reason that men looked to Gods and desired to conquer the oceans. It is 'intelligence'; specifically, the ability to critically think. To wonder about the things we have no answers for. This is contemplation.
Throughout the entire universe, only intelligent life can contemplate. It is among the rarest of privileges imaginable - the ability for the universe to examine itself, and even to use this gathered information to change its immediate environment for the benefit (or detriment) of an individual or group. There is no universal moral code; it's not encrypted into the mathematical language of the universe. One needs only to live life for a day to see that while some people have nothing yet share when they can, others have more than they could ever need, but still cheat and lie to get more. This is the beauty of contemplation... Give 100 people the same philosophical question, the same pieces of information and the same basic template to work with, and you'll get dozens of different conclusions. For example, Aristotle, one of the most influential philosophers in human history, believed contemplation to be the highest form of moral activity because it is "continuous, pleasant, self-sufficient, and complete." However, this is the same man who believed that certain kinds of people were born to be enslaved...
Fast-forward 2300 years and 1,666 kilometers to the glacial Carpathian mountain-ranges in Ukraine.
One man is contemplating morality. He sees 'good' and 'bad' in nature, and feels it in himself. To hunt is to kill, but for thousands of generations death has meant sustenance for humanity. Can something truly be wrong, in a cosmic sense, if it secures the survival of such a rare, significant entity? Other animals kill to survive. Do they have to answer to the same gods? Is it a question of modernity? Of necessity? Is there any value in embodying either extreme? Does anything even have any meaning at all? These are just some of the rhetorical questions that Zgard spends 62 minutes contemplating - to astounding effect.
'Contemplation' is an incredibly ambitious folk/atmospheric black metal album. Genre-expectations are completely defied as the music forges its way through the icy fog of metal. Certainly, it's black metal at heart, but the guitar's focus is less on traditional tremolo-picking and more on slightly slower, slightly higher-pitched, layered chords/sounds. The folk elements in this album are numerous, with flutes and occasional cleans/chanting, but never become cheesy or outstay their welcome; it all just fits the atmosphere that was being created from the very first seconds of this record. To define this album in one word, it would be just that: atmosphere. There are simply so many things going on here, which all fit beautifully together, that it's hard to not get immersed by the swirling snowstorm that blocks the vision ahead... But there's always a light to guide your way. Despite the fragile, glacial isolation that is 'Contemplation', there always remains the feeling of balance and warmth - not dissimilar to the effects of hypothermia. Whereas black metal is traditionally oriented around hopelessness and despair, there are moments on this album that are unmistakably hopeful and positive in comparison. Take, for example, the track 'Underworld Bells'. It starts with a haunting, atmospheric introduction and then Hell's bells start to chime, but they sound decidedly innocuous. Yet it works. Our listener is not actually in Hell, just imagining it from the desired side of the spiritual plane.
This is truly a journey of absolute neutrality; darkness and light abound, but are met with indifference through the fingertips of Yaromisl, the sole member of Zgard, as he treats each fledgeling emotion that arises as merely a mediating factor; if something becomes too dark, it must be considered from the point of view of light, and vice versa. 'Contemplation' switches from tortured frustration to tranquil optimism continually. It may not always occur as transitionally seamlessly as on an Edge of Sanity or Opeth album, but it's not looking to do that. Trains of thought, and the emotional feelings associated with them, change instantaneously, and one can go from happy-go-lucky to existential crisis in blink of an eye. Yaromisl succeeds in illustrating this cognitive discussion exceptionally well in many instances, such as in the title track where his measured, softly spoken questions to the wind receive answers in the form of evil shrieks.
It's a shame that Zgard is such an unrecognised project. There is something distinctly human about 'Contemplation'.
