Black Gale is a British conceptual Dark Metal, Doom Metal, and Industrial Metal band from Lansallos, UK, as well as the creative association of the same name. This creative association also includes the Ukrainian Gothic Doom Metal band Клініка (one of the first projects in Ukrainian Gothic Metal), as well as the electronic side project of Black Gale band members – SKAARJ (Ambient/Traditional Electronic).
Project History
The Black Gale project started its creative activity in 2013. Today, it has two permanent members: Anton Sharov and Olga Gilham. The authors are of Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian origin. The first album, Beyond the Memory of the World (2013-2014), was purely experimental. Israeli guitarist and violinist Terry Ivensky and Lord Kaiaphas, the vocalist of the Norwegian Black Metal band Ancient, took an active part in the recording of the album. Kaiaphas recorded the vocals for the opening track and also did a great job as a sound engineer, achieving a decent sound for the underground despite the complete lack of recording skills of the musicians, who had many different interesting ideas.
After completing their first album, the members of Black Gale approached the band Клініка, which shared a common lyricist with them, with a proposal to record their second album "Ілюзія Самовідтворення Всесвіту", as a joint project. The conceptual lyrics and sketches of the musical tracks for the album had been ready for a long time, but the album was never recorded. Клініка, already inactive at that time, supported this idea, and a long process of creating this epic canvas began. Today, all the music for the album is ready, but the recording of vocals and mixing has been delayed for several years due to the relocation of all the members of Black Gale and Клініка to different countries, the high demands of various work projects, and the commitments of Black Gale to its own material.
In parallel, in 2018, Black Gale started working on their second (Russian-language) album, The World Without a Past. After two years, all the arrangements were ready. Anton Sharov came to Kyiv to collaborate with guitar master Konstantin Karachun, who is also a talented guitarist with his original style. The musicians gathered in a guitar workshop in the basement of a kindergarten, and this album was recorded there. Compared to the first album, it featured completely different music: gloomy passages of synthesizers, dense and slightly jagged guitar riffs, and Konstantin Karachun's signature improvised solos, mesmerizing with their beauty and explosive energy. The band had no time for rehearsals; all the parts were recorded almost on the fly, so the sound of the guitars came out quite raw, 'garage'. The lyrics are radically sincere, full of vivid and memorable images, anxiety, hopelessness, and despair. In fact, it is a separate cycle of poetry, mostly anti-war. They serve as a desperate warning of impending tragedy and contain all the author's vivid memories, feelings, and experiences from a normal, peaceful life, which we will no longer experience in the impending era of death, lies, hypocrisy, and chaos. This is an anti-war album recorded in a country that has been embraced by propaganda and has been prepared for a big war for several years.
From the memories of Anton Sharov, vocalist and lyricist, about the recording of this album: 'Everything happened by itself. This album was a cry of a screamer in the wilderness. The great experiment had already started, the countdown was on, and you couldn't change anything; you were alone. But you couldn't be silent; it was all tearing you up inside. Since childhood, I have had an unusual intuition that sees ulterior motives, sincerity, and hypocrisy, even when I don't want to, when I want to believe. Such a person sees the world differently and perceives more of the dirt than others. I have seen how choices are given without choice, how whole countries and peoples are put under external rule. And then people, the highest value in this world, become expendable. They are indoctrinated with unimportant values for which they are ready to hate and kill. It is enough to deprive people of critical thinking, and all concepts can be replaced. 'War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength (George Orwell’s ‘1984’). It was an elusive era and the home place where I grew up and loved. Knowing that it would all soon be just a memory, I decided to make an album about this world: a dying world left without roots, a world without a past. So I went to Konstantin's studio. He's an old-school rocker, in his 60's at the time. He had a whole collection of good branded guitars, but when he heard the arrangement of the first song of the album Solar Wind, he said that this is true rock music, which comes from the origins of rock — the music of protest. Konstantin took a homemade guitar called a Stiralkaster, made from a washboard and a Stratocaster fingerboard, and on this guitar, he recorded most of the guitar parts of the album.'.
The second album The World Without a Past (2021), was released on CD by the Russian underground label Satanarsa Records. The CD version of the album also includes two tracks from the conceptual Russian-language album To Those Who Are Not Looking for an Answer, which is currently in the process of being recorded.
The third instrumental album The New Line of Evolution (2023), named after the band's own philosophical concept, was released. This album is experimental, at the intersection of dark ambient and industrial metal. It is dedicated to modern (since the beginning of the 20th century) military conflicts and represents the first phase of The New Line of Evolution – recognizing the mistakes of the past.
The fourth album To Those Who Are Not Looking for an Answer, is in the recording process. This conceptual album continues the anti-war theme of the album The World Without a Past in a new reality, while musically, it is much more technical and aggressive.
Ideological concept
The basis of the Black Gale band's creativity, as well as their creative association, is the neohumanist philosophical concept The New Line of Evolution. According to the authors' conviction, this is the worldview of the people of the future: skeptics and individualists who cannot be controlled or manipulated. This worldview will become dominant after the inevitable revaluation of values due to the wars and upheavals experienced.
The main theses are:
- critical thinking;
- pacifism and cosmopolitanism;
- individualism and complete freedom of the individual;
- the priority of individual human nature over generally accepted norms and authorities.
There is nothing new in this concept. It is a consolidated system of worldview based on the ideas of humanism, pacifism, and individualism. The main values are human life, personal and social well-being, freedom of the human personality, the ability of a person to resist any form of manipulation and coercion, as well as to protect his or her rights. At the same time, the authors of the project are firmly convinced that each person has his or her own unique inner world and life experience, so it is absolutely inadmissible to impose one's views and worldview on anyone.
The mission of the project's philosophy is to support free thinking and understanding of oneself. Non-format music, with its direct energy, breaks the usual templates of mass culture. Imaginative, sincere, and cynical lyrics rise from the subconscious. Such music and lyrics are meant to support a strong and independent soul wishing to cleanse itself of the garbage imposed on it and to awaken its vital energy and potential.
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