Artist: House Spirit
Country: USA
Label: Altare Productions
Formats: Cassette Tape
Year: 2024
With a title like this, especially in combination with the band’s name, it was not quite hard to guess the concept of this band’s first full-length album. Obviously this 30-minute cassette tape evolves around Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic gothic novel ‘The House Of The Seven Gables’, written in 1850. An enchanting romantic novella that swirls around themes of love, depression, yearning, the supernatural and witchcraft, with an underlying deeper meaning that includes guilt, revenge and reconciliation. Although there’s no lyrics included, judging from the track titles, ‘Seven Gables’ seems to follow the flow of the novel and could be regarded as the Black Metal soundtrack to this great gloomy story.
And, frankly, the music on offer fits pretty well to the overall atmosphere of the story, filled with despair and the eerie vibe of the house itself. As expected, the music finds itself in the more Atmospheric but Raw Black Metal territories with enough variation in tempos and riffs to keep you on your toes, but at the same time it feels very homogenous. The natural flow of the music drags you through the sinister and haunted house and fits seamlessly to the mental and emotional state of the characters. It is depressive and beautiful at the same time, mainly because of the somewhat muffled production and the excellent melodies.
House Spirit, the pseudonym of the only person behind the band, seems to have a splendid sense of drama and mystique, both blending in together in such a natural fashion it is amazing to know that, besides two earlier demo tapes, this is his first real feat. He is also releasing music under other names, Blood Hymn and Chains Of Existence, but both those two bands as well as the two earlier House Spirit demos all flew under the radar for me. That makes this encounter with ‘Seven Gables’ even more special. Definitely a recommended listen to anyone who is into gloomy, atmospheric yet raw Black Metal.
