The yawning maw of Signal Rex opens wider, near-unhinging, and from this void springs forth Heliacal Arising, the first full, intentional movement of Portuguese cult GINNUNGAGAP.
Four years it did take to form what now travels ‘neath the ‘Majestic Throne Of The Sky’, wrapped in a layered cloak of guitars and keys, organ-like in tone, and lending a vital air of the mystic to this excursion, a throat laid open and scraped raw and bleeding over gravel declares our path. Arising heliacal, the title track indeed shimmers distant, ever fettered to the Solar King, despite desire, for Nature is immovable in her law. Pounding rhythms sound the charge, vigorous, yet pulsating with the heart of secret ritual, moans intone the chant, the cultish yawp.
Down from the overlooking heights of fog-enshrouded ‘Herminius Mons’, a slow, yet stoic and purposeful gait we adopt, eyes raised and hearts open, pumping native blood to commune the ‘Mysteries Of The Primordial Moon’. Aghast at the fury toward us from one thought dear and contemplative, yet open to its wisdom the claret runs almost frantically toward she hanging in the obsidian sky, all instruments and voices joined in true surrender. Winter reigns perpetual here, triumphal and steadfast, the tune to sing its glory here can but follow the rule of frost.
Wandering now, gutted and weary in the ‘Forest Of Hyperborean Evil’, our goal lays in sight, yet one more purge is required, one final obeisance before true wisdom is revealed, for some will fade here, so close, yet unworthy. Trees we pass become threads in a raveling tapestry, cords (chords) unwinding before the abrasion of ‘Polar Solitude III’.
Unexpected, newborn, yet somehow already crucial, Heliacal Arising is a blizzard-swept pinnacle surmounted for GINNUNGAGAP and for black metal as a whole over the past few years. Fair warning to the passive, the meanderer, the pick-and-choosers. To hear one song, to “skip around” will be your loss, as this is an album meant to be heard as such. What matters most here is that other realms are being sought and attained, even at the beginning
Review By: Lord Randall
GINNUNGAGAP
Heliacal Arising
Signal Rex