Anguish, Mountain

Thou - At the Foot of Mt. Drisskill (elevation 535 feet)

 We are but antlings, vain in our assumptions. We would presume to grasp at the unfathomable. We would presume to dress it as man, to give it names, to speak its intention. Yet we are humbled beneath the shadow of true greatness. Now the earth crest rises to meet our gaze. We are but fleas. We are but lice. We are nothing. Insignificant. Dust motes blown away by the breath of time. Vague memories of no consequence. Vanquished are the fires in the eyes of the friends I knew. Just as they are deafened to my wasted breath. Each one more wasted than the others you can bet. Now I see through the illusion of permanence. I am diminished in the presence of vastness. Useless are my tools of science, of religion. There is no understanding of limitless power. We are at peace in our minor, subordinate role. Accept our frail, short lives.

Ildjarn - Mountains Covered in Snow Forever

Ildjarn


"There seemed to be no limit to the mountain range, or to the length of the frightful stone city which bordered its inner foothills. Fifty miles of flight in each direction showed no major change in the labyrinth of rock and masonry that clawed up corpselike through the eternal ice." (HP Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness)

The Inverted Abyss

Deafest -- 14,000 Feet

Deafest

Divinity of Mountains (tour poster)

AHAB

OMEGA MASSIF

VALBORG

Bergmetal: Oro-Emblems of the Musical Beyond

A veritable new orogeny, via gnOme books:



Nab Saheb & Denys X. Arbaris. Bergmetal: Oro-Emblems of the Musical Beyond. ISBN-13: 978-1494907204 ISBN-10: 1494907208. HWORDE, 2013. 114 pages.

Bergmetal is an exploratory tract on the trisonic intersections of MOUNTAINS, MYSTICISM, and HEAVY METAL. Mixing theoretical reflection and studious redaction into ascending gestures of alpine musical thought, the book proceeds via seven poetic emblems plus commentary addressing works by Bathory, Darkthrone, Sleep, Aluk Todolo, Omega Massif, Schrei aus Stein, and Sapthuran. Opening essays by the authors on the ideals and history of the bergmetal genre provide a logistical starting point and contextual basecamp.

CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction: On Bergmetal
I. Enter the Mountain
II. No Way
III. Slumber Killed
IV. Occult Rock
V. Abandoned Mine
VI. Scream of Stone
VII. Never to Descend

“A casual email…a voidal exposure…! In this slim volume, metal, lyrics, and philosophy combine - “with spirit deathless, endless, infinite” – to launch a ferocious assault on the imagination!” – Manabrata Guha, Prize Fellow, Univ. of Bath

“A strange creature I am now, burnt by the sun and yet frozen, clung onto my will to take just another step” — Stormcrow

“Metal! Mysticism! Mountains! Whoever loves one will be interested in this book. Whoever loves two will like it. Whoever loves all three might be in paradise.” – Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College)

“An ascent into the wilderness of alpine aesthetics and heavy metallurgies, with poetry, mysticism, and esoteric philosophy illuminating the peaks and abysses of sublime human experience alongside the indifferent expanse of geological time.” — RH, Schrei aus Stein

*

"The sailor Larsen was first to spy the jagged line of witchlike cones and pinnacles ahead, and his shouts sent everyone to the windows of the great cabined plane. Despite our speed, they were very slow in gaining prominence; hence we knew that they that they must be infinitely far off, and visible only because of their abnormal height.  Little by little, however, they rose grimly into the western sky; allowing us to distinguish various bare, bleak, blackish summits, and to catch the curious sense of fantasy which they inspired as seen in the reddish antarctic light against the provocative background of iridescent ice-dust clouds.  In the whole spectacle there was a persistent, pervasive hint of stupendous secrecy and potential revelation.  It was as if these stark, nightmare spires marked the pylons of a frightful gateway into forbidden spheres of dream, and complex gulfs of remote time, space, and ultradimensionality. I could not help feeling that they were evil things--mountains of madness whose further slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.  That seething, half-luminous cloud background held ineffable suggestions of a vague ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial, and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world" (HPL, At the Mountains of Madness).