Although this album has been out for almost a year now, it was only uptill recently that I got my hands on it, and I immediately fell in love with it. Gary Lenaire, one of the founding member of the Tourniquet had been working on this album under the project name – Talking Snakes, with a number of featuring guest such as Bubby Lewis, Anna Sentina, Neil Swanson, Guy Ritter, Aly Frank and Andrijana Janevska. The album was released on the 29th of July 2017 and had been written, produced, engineered and mixed by Gary himself. The mastering and the album artwork was done by Pat Keane and Willie Frazier respectively.
Gary Lenaire has released 12 records, published over 100 songs worldwide, was nominated for six GMA (Dove) Awards, and received HM Magazine’s “Guitarist of the Year” award from 1994-1996. In context of this album, Gary quotes, “I don’t know what time is or if it exists at all. I have long felt that time, as perceived by humans, is an almost inescapable infatuation with the past and the future–longing for or regretting days gone by and anticipating or dreading the future. It is in that hypnotic daydream that we waste our experience, the actual present–reality as it happens. It is when we truly love that we lose all sense of time: In a song, a family gathering, meditation, prayer, a lover. In recording this record I found myself in that timeless space.” Continue reading »
Jethro de Beer, the creative force behind “Be Not Betrayed” (SkyBurnsBlack Records) and “Bismoth”, strikes me as a thinker and a fighter. The spirit of his struggle, documented online, is captured for me in the title of that Marilyn Manson / Sneakerpimps collaboration, “Long Hard Road Out of Hell”. Quoting music from a movie may look like I’m making light of a troubling subject, but no. It is as when Paul writes to the Ephesians: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (6:12). It is clear to me that extreme metal seduces the listener ever downward, and once he/she has developed a taste for its tonal palette, it becomes difficult to take anything else seriously. I returned to an interview with Pilgrim, of Crimson Moonlight where he argues for blackened liturgical metal, and while the accepted view holds that black metal can’t be Christian, he says that “… it can be anything but neutral and lukewarm.” (http://bravewords.com/features/crimson-moonlight-blackened-liturgy). I have this impression when I listen to “Psalmic Peace”.
