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'History & Heritage I' by While Angels Watch [Eis038Doc]
Available from Eislicht-Verlag, Postfach 160, D-01307 Dresden, Germany.
Reviewed by Troy Southgate
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WHILE Angels Watch is Dev’s one-man project from South-East London and I previously had the pleasure of dissecting his ’Dark Age’ (2002) and ’Still the Star Shines’ (2004) albums for the Synthesis website, so what a treat it was for me to receive a review copy of this latest release. The aforementioned offerings appeared on the French label, Cynfeirdd, but this one has made a step up and appears on one of Germany’s larger neofolk labels. Anyone who has had the pleasure of meeting Dev will know that apart from having a fantastic voice, he’s also a great guy with a colourful past. In the early 1980s Dev lived in an Anarchist squat and became familiar with some of the key players in the underground Punk and Industrial music scenes that were around at the time. In fact the songs on this album were written and recorded between 1985 and 1990 and first distributed on three cassettes: ‘Reflection of Joy’ (1986), ‘Behind the Mists’ (1988) and ‘Falling in Love’ (1990). So what you have here, then, is a little time-capsule stretching back over twenty years and the CD insert even contains a couple of black and white photographs taken by Chris Knowles during the very period in question. The rest of the booklet is adorned with Dev’s own chthonic images of subterranean dripstone where stalactites blend with stalagmites and form eerie skeletal towers, whilst underground rock seams are infused with a disturbing interplay of colour and form that seems to resemble the moist corridors of various human orifices. The CD contains twelve tracks, runs to 33 minutes and is limited to a run of just 525 copies. The first song on the album, ’Reflection of Joy’, makes it clear from the very beginning that we are entering a lost age and it burns with raw energy and passion as Dev’s charismatic tones sweep through the lively drumbeats and engineered feedback. You’d be forgiven for imagining that Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook from Joy Division lent WAW a helping hand, but the song is far from derivative and has a unique and accessible 80s sound. The lyrics appear to suit the album perfectly, too, with Dev admitting with some nostalgia that here lies a ’monument for which I grieve’ and which represents ’the ash of times that were once fire’. It’s an ode to the spirit of revival; the testimony of a well spent youth. ’Shadow Over Shade’ has more of a beat to it, although the jangling guitar is still there in the background. It’s a very poppy tune, actually, but later on a few heavy riffs emerge during the guitar solo and the music assumes a temporary Rock feel until the whole thing returns to origins. I could imagine ’Curse the Crown of Thorns’ being performed by Ostara, it’s prophetic sentiments about civilisational decay and approaching Ragnarok perfectly matching Dev’s powerful vocals. Absolutely brilliant. ’The Isle of Glass’ also has a slight Wodenist dimension, but here we get the strong impression that action must take priority over thought: ’There are no more maps, no more philosophies / Just a calling that lures, a rattle of keys.’ A warrior is searching for direction, tired of books and struggling to find his place in the greater scheme of things. ‘Angel’, meanwhile, is a great song, but far too short. It tells of loss, memory and a rejection of the material world; its catchy tribal drums, rumbling bass and strummed guitar amounting to little more than one minute. The ambient keyboards at the beginning of ‘A Gentle Death’ are more soothing in tone and it’s a curious, almost inoffensively apologetic song about slowly falling out of love. The lyrics are brutally honest, featuring expressions like ’No one’s to blame I just hate you tonight’ and ’If only I could find something new in your face.’ The next track, ’Sadie’, is a fleeting murder ballad in which a determined stalker is waiting to pounce and exact some form of vengeance on an unsuspecting victim. The music is fast and furious, its squealing feedback building up slowly and eventually accumulating in a rampaging cacophony before ending sweetly with a few plucked guitar strings and a final rolling of the drums. ’Solitary’, on the other hand, is classic neofolk. Unremitting guitar chords and chiming bells are delivered in the style of early Death In June, with the lyrics used to convey an irrevocable descent into loneliness, isolation and, ultimately, oblivion. The atmosphere of misery and desperation continues into ’A Little Death’, where the words hint at a sterile relationship that has run its inevitable course and all the frustration that goes with it: ’Show me I’m alive / Discover me again … There is no escape for energy / So we fuck to feel alive.’ The first half of the song is slower, like a nursery rhyme, but it erupts at the start of the second verse and fittingly echoes the anger and impatience in the lyrics. ’The Axle’ was written by Aleister Crowley and this is the second time that Dev has set the words of the Great Beast 666 to music, the first occasion being the stunning ‘Walpurgis-Night’ which appears on the ‘Liber Al Vel Legis’ (2005) compilation. As the music returns to the characteristic neofolk style, Dev croons, almost tongue-in-cheek, about the myth of the Judaeo-Christian god and the indomitable march of both nature and super nature. Again, it’s far too short for my liking, but that’s obviously meant to be taken as a compliment. Compared to the other tracks on this album, ’In the Wind’ - a catchy ditty, if ever there was - is extremely optimistic and thumbs its nose at a former life in which creativity and adventure, perhaps, were cruelly denied. The vocals are great here and it’s my favourite track on the album. Finally, ’In Heaven’s Arms’ seems to contradict the previous song with its yearning for love, but it‘s very well written and shows just what Dev is capable of: ’Around the tree of life we had sown / Our spear of destiny never thrown.’ Here, a semi-imaginary female image offers a new life, but there is a price to be paid: ’Memories fading, like spells broken by your charms / Falling in love again and she’s in heaven’s arms.’ Musically, this is superb and as one of WAW’s later songs from those formative years the technical development between this and the previous tracks on the album is there for all to hear and it’s no surprise to see why Dev has built upon that trend even further with his more recent efforts. So, to conclude, this retrospective exploration of Dev’s early song-writing abilities is an essential part of the WAW catalogue and there will be many people who, like me, are really grateful that some of it has seen the light of day. Roll on Part Two!
For more information about While Angels Watch, visit: http://www.myspace.com/falling3
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