Culak – Underneath the Veil of God
Culak – Underneath the Veil of God
Self-Released
Release Date: 29/02/24
Running Time: 39:22 for each album (118:06 in total)
Review by Dark Juan
8/10
Greetings and bulbous salutations to you all, you bunch of shocking tarts! I am Dark Juan and I care not for blandishments or frippery! Which, to be fair, is an absolute bare-faced lie, because Dark Juan likes luxury, beautiful women and intoxicants in large amounts and is frankly appalled because he has champagne tastes that he has to try and satiate on lemonade money, as wrangling recalcitrant young gentlemen pays poorly. Hence Dark Juan has a large car, but one that is elderly. The same with the musical equipment I used to own. It was the best I could afford from a decade before the latest equipment hit. However, unless I am going to bottle my own farts and flog them on OnlyFans with pictures of my hideous trotters (I believe this may be a developing market due to my all-round gorgeousness, although it does always seem to be men who are the fools easily parted from their cash. You don’t see many pretty young ladies splashing the cash on bottled man farts and well-turned, athletic male ankles in a smart sports sock, whereas the chaps seem quite happy to shell out the shekels to own the aemanations of American young adult women). I am forced to accept that toys are expensive, and I can’t have them without serious economizing, and I like beer and comfort too much to do that.
Today, upon the pious and splendid Platter of Splatter™, I have something very left-field. It is by a gentleman called Christian Culak and it is a triple album of Choral/ Chaotic Metal. Now, the man himself describes it as a double-LP that mixes into a third album. It is very confusing to a man who is that wired on coffee right now that he doesn’t even know which orientation is vertical, let alone which way is up.
It should be pointed out that Culak himself is at pains to indicate that this is a DIY endeavour and that his actual career is being that of a philosopher teaching this to others, and that the music he plays is a passion project.
However, he has sent his music out there and it has come to my attention. Therefore, I have to decide whether his musical vision is worth your spending money on it, or whether his art should remain a private matter (much like your internet browsing history, you filthy perverts).
Herein lies the problem with this release. It is a very idiosyncratic record that has been recorded with a total audience of one in mind. Culak appears to inhabit some kind of decommissioned, cobwebbed, yet curiously well maintained cathedral where he is alternately haunted and charmed by the ghosts of the choirs that have opened their hearts and throats to the glory of God, yet chilled by the ethereal wailing, the sonorous, yet foreboding sound, of the basses setting the spine on edge until the glorious clear altos and sopranos shake off the darkness rampaging out of shadowed corners and chase the wraiths concealed therein back into their holes. Now, if you are like Dark Juan and are possessed of a Gothic, yet romantic (in the literary sense – Mrs Dark Juan would argue that she has seen more romance in a brass dog than your good correspondent) sense of being, then you will probably find much to enjoy in this melding of choral singing and Metal that incorporates Math Metal and Djent into a very clean sound with very artificial sounding sequenced drums. The music is a curious mix of the mechanical and electronic with the analogue of human voices. If you can ignore the sound of the drums, you can enjoy the jerky, spasmodic, flailing guitar work which chops, changes, and flows between Neue Deutsche Härte German-engineered perfection, Djent exploration of deep B and beyond and the precision of Math Metal stitched together with some frankly gorgeous, fingerpicked chord medleys.
The thing is, though, is that this triple record set really is a labour of love for the performer and doesn’t really have any pretension to be saleable, or even particularly listenable to anyone else besides Christian Culak, hence the depth of the work and sheer effort that has gone into putting these three albums into something resembling a coherent whole is going to be missed by a huge swathe of humanity, let alone the record-buying public. This is what is making Dark Juan increasingly conflicted about Culak.
It should also be pointed out that this is an instrumental set of albums, the choral voices used as another instrument, rather than having discernible syllabification.
In short, there is much to enjoy here if you like the choppy, counterpointed rhythms of the likes of Meshuggah welded to choirs singing their hearts out in the finest of Goffik styles, and then speared by moments of true feeling and heartbreaking beauty. You just need to learn to ignore the horrible, sequenced drums. Thankfully, this is easily done.
I shall leave the final words to the man himself:
“Underneath the Veil of God” musically represents thorough conscious change as an alchemical
process, in terms of the gnostic tradition. It begins with an entity engrossed in chaos. That entity
is extracted out of it. And it is beheld in all its ego. Its filth is then calcinated. Disembodied, it
conjures itself, then adjures from above. A new nature is forged. And it is beheld in silence.
Anew it reenters and absorbs the world, until light shatters the void. It is synthesized thereafter.
The concept splits into “Underneath the Veil” and “Veil of God”. Each album discerns objects and
relations within the alchemical process. The former emphasizes raw, rough, aggressive forces.
The latter emphasizes the gentle yet powerful flow among them. Their relations are sometimes
constitutive, and other times functional. They’re not necessarily meant to stand alone.”
Quite.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System understands that this music is something primal tearing itself out of the heart of Christian Culak, and that it is an unusual, unique beast that has no pretensions about being famous or massive, and therefore awards a score of 8/10 – this being for the sheer scale of the work, and the fact that the records are very good indeed, but also that they are not really a commercial release. People who like mainstream stuff won’t buy it, and neither will people who don’t like being challenged as to what they are listening to. A point in favour is that the records all have the same runtime and the third album in the series is the culmination of the previous works all coming together in one massive overload of music.
TRACKLISTING:
Underneath The Veil Of God:
01. Of Blackened Earth
02. From The Urn
03. Behold The Ancient of Days
04. Above Pillars of Fire
05. Dominion
06. Encaustic Soul
07. Behold The Elder of Days
08. Integral Birth
09. Aur
Underneath The Veil:
01. Ayn
02. Extract
03. Void
04. Ashes
05. Adjure
06. Ignis
07. Void II
08. Azoth
09. Eternal
Veil Of God:
01. Sof
02. Immure
03. Awe
04. Evanesce
05. Conjure
06. Natura
07. Awe II
08. Innermost
09. Sanctum
LINE-UP:
Christian Culak – Everything. As if the man doesn’t have enough to do educating young minds in philosophy!
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
