Personally, I avoid the label “DSBM” (Depressive Suicidal Black Metal). I was amazed back in the first decade of this millennium when several black metal bands started to drop the satanic imagery towards a more intimate, individualistic approach towards music, and incorporate elements from other genres, such as doom metal, shoegaze or post-rock. Bands that started to give up on pseudo-religious themes in benefit of more introspective insights into the real darkness: the darkness that inhabits our minds and accompanies us until the final decline of our pointless existence. Bands that conjured up real demons; the kind of demons which haunt us every single day of our lives, driving us to utter misery and insanity, and lure us into the wickedest acts of self-destruction. The true blackness lies within.
But soon after, as it usually happens, individuals all around the globe copied the formula established by their predecessors, tinged their music with a supposedly “suicidal” sentiment, and - lo and behold! - here we have the “DSBM” sub-genre! Many of these projects had some quality, of course, but there sprung literally thousands of bands whose emotional intensity and “depressive” mood could easily be surpassed by Demis Roussos. Thus, I quickly lost interest in the “DSBM scene”. But that doesn’t mean I lost interest in introspective, melancholic or depressive black metal; quite on the contrary, it remains as my favourite branch of metal music. But it has to have good quality and by this I do not mean elaborate technicality or anything like that, but simply that abstract dimension so hard to define and impossible to quantify: feeling or, as phrased above, emotional intensity.
But enough chitchat. All this rambling served to point out how Hypothermia is one of the seminal bands in this specific variant of black metal. But if you’re remotely acquainted with this type of music, you probably know this already. Hypothermia’s sad, minimalistic, repetitive guitar riffs; its down-tempo, monotonous rhythmic section and Kim Carlsson’s anguished shrieking made them one of the must-hear bands to anyone who’s into saturnine black metal. The band has evolved to a considerable degree since its first recordings, although maintaining its essence (just compare older albums like “Veins” or “Köld” with their last full-length, “Skogens Hjärta”). Their music channels a sense of despondency and despair in a way that few other bands are able to do. They have a new full-length on the forge for already two years and released a new demo-track this month, “Självdestruktivitet Född Av Monotona Tankegångar IV: Warakumbla”, which is available for download on Bandcamp and for sale on the gigs they’re performing in Germany, Belgium and Netherlands during March, together with Svarti Loghin in the “Tanke & Minne” mini-tour.
Check them out and unjoy!
Here's the new demo:
Here are the two tracks to feature in the forthcoming album:
