Kick Off the Spooky Season with Abiura’s HAUNTOLOGY
I can’t do justice to the concept of Abiura’s new concept album Hauntology, so I’ll begin with artist Daniele Vergine’s own words:
…is a concept album constructed as a 31 minutes long track, split in 6 different sections unified by one common leitmotif that inspired the whole work: the theme of late capitalism and its pervasive effects on the human being. The different sections of the album are metaphorically the stages of a journey through the “ghosts” of the 21st century, the lost futures that are tormenting us and which are preventing us to imagine different realities, by locking us in a cultural impasse.
While the concept is metaphorical, the album has a literal haunting feeling, which is why I decided it was the perfect album to cover this October 1st, as the spooky season is taking full shape. The haunting and ambient musical project was born in 2020, but Vergine has been making music with Black metal/post-metal band Noise Trail Immersion for some time. The relationship between the Black metal scene and ambient soundscapes is a long and enduring one and with Hauntology, Vergine does it justice. Dark, sprawling, and often oppressive – Hauntology is as aptly named as any release in the past several years.
Vergine stated that he wanted this album to convey uneasiness and it surely does that. Throughout Hauntology‘s several acts, unease is the most prevailing feeling left for the listener. In fact, the unease is of the visceral type, leaving one physically feeling the difficulty of the transition from the old ghosts into a new paradigm. Visceral, tangible, and literal are the only ways to describe this feeling.
While this reviewer would never describe listening to this release as an enjoyable experience, but not every album or song should be enjoyable. Sometimes, it’s about feeling, about the emotions, about real catharsis. Abiura’s Hauntology is that. It’s catharsis, it’s dark, it’s oppressive, but in the end it’s all rebirth.
