VICTORY OVER THE SUN — A Tessitura of Transfiguration (review)

VICTORY OVER THE SUN — A Tessitura of Transfiguration album cover

Album · 2020 · Avant-garde Metal

4/5 · 2020-11-13
siLLy puPPy

In the 21st century there seem to be two major trends. Retro bands that strive to bring metal back to its more simplistic roots and wildly experimental acts that are hell bent for leather in driving the genre forward into almost unrecognizable territories. The Portland, Oregon act VICTORY OVER THE SUN is definitely in the latter camp crafting an abrasive metallic soundscape that honestly sounds like no other. This second album A TESSITURA OF TRANSFIGURATION uses black metal as its canvas to paint up with atonal dissonant guitar jangles much like the horrific sounds of Deathspell Omega, VICTORY OVER THE SUN is one of those meandering types that uses tones, textures and timbres to navigate through the sound spectrum rather than any sort of recognizable soundscape.

This is the one person project of Vivian Tylinska aka Cichy Duch who is one of the only trans women i’ve encountered in the world of extreme metal. This album features Vivian on guitar, bass, drums, vocals as well as in the producer’s seat and chief composer. Four guest musicians add bass clarinet, violin, and extra vocals mostly only the first track “ The Objectless World” which begins as a strange avant-garde sounding black metal track but then drifts into a post-metal parade with jazzy extras. The atonal procession is laced with extremely dissonant counterpoints fortified with Vivian’s monster growls screamed to high heaven. There is a choppiness to the guitar riffs with oddball time signatures making this a truely progressive romp through the land of avant-garde metal.

A TESSITURA features four lengthy tracks with the opener reaching almost 11 minutes. Despite sounding like a swirling pool of chaotic sound generated randomly, Vivian claims that this album was the result of hundreds of hours of writing, rewriting, recording, rerecording, mixing and remixing. This is type of metal that is for the most adventurous, for those who seek the irreverence of an exploration that leaves behind any preconceptions and has no problem with random deviations from the extremity of caustic metal sounds to a more post-rock world where jazz instruments take a stroll through a cyclical procession of amorphous sound clusters. For those into bands like Fleurety, Ved Buens Ende or Maudlin of the Well, this is for you as VICTORY OVER THE SUN has done its avant-garde metal homework and delivered a very interesting specimen of sophisticated metal madness.

Despite the instantly inaccessible nature of A TESSITURA OF TRANSFIGURATION, this one does indeed have its hooks although you have to tune yourself into its vibe. In some ways its like reading a novel while on a high speed roller coaster as all the elements of normal music as distorted and drawn out into bizarre concoctions that are seemingly alien but begin to make sense once you piece it together. Perhaps the most similar band i’ve heard is Coma Void Cluster of recent years which engages in lengthy atonal journeys through rhythmic irregulars and extremely bombastic metal elements blowing your ears out for most of the album’s run. This one is only for the avant-gardists out there but it really is an excellent example of unorthodox romps through the metal universe in the most spastic way possible. Vivian describes this music as transcendental black metal as a tribute to Liturgy but in many ways blows Liturgy away.