Black metal often has moments of intense rebirth and re-imagining, and it’s projects such as Botanist that fuels these periods of incredible experimentation and in turn threatens to turn the genre completely inside out.
Botanist first came to our attention in 2011 with the forty track, double album I: The Suicide Tree//II: A Rose From The Dead which we talked about here, and last years III: Doom in Bloom/Allies (which had a particularly interesting take on collaboration in its favour, besides being excellent). Otrebor (vocals, drums, hammered dulcimer) has been constantly and consistently moving Botanist forward and giving us much to think about in terms of how we treat the natural world, our attitudes towards it and that we have a responsibility for our actions.
IV: Mandrogora continues the story of The Botanist and is fairly complex in its narration which hints at magic, pagan ideals, and legions of Mandragora (or demons) that are brought forth to obliterate mankind for his part in the destruction of the plant world. This is a record of intense scope, and Otrebor once again uses Botanist as a platform to call for action and whilst many black metal acts out there have agenda’s and missions and messages, they don’t always feel rounded out – Botanist feels entirely whole, and completely necessary.
IV: Mandragora is as eerie as any of the other works of Botanist, yet this time around the music and the ideas and thoughts behind it have been condensed and tightened with a much more palatable approach (we loved I and II, but it was often overwhelming in its length and ambition) to the issues at hand. Of course, the music is still utterly impenetrable and the combination of drums and dulcimer gives Botanist an insanity that no other artist can compare to. Otrebor’s vocal style is still marvelously unhinged in its strangled screams of skirmish and his voice lends the songs a supernatural action.
“Arboreal Gallows (Mandragora I)” begins the record with a cleverly hidden melody that sits below the otherwise harsh sounds that Botanist usually deals in. The track shifts in sudden movements from devastatingly quick patterns into a much slower sections and this in turn leads to the discordant resonances of “Nightshade (Mandragora II)” which is delightfully reminiscent of Bosse-de-Nage at times.
Off-kilter strangeness is the modus operandi here, and arrangements heard are devilishly impressive. Just when you think you’ve got it, Botanist throws out another curious strike on the hammered dulcimer and you’re right back where you started. It’s truly fantastic, in all senses of the word, and the otherworldly appeal of this project is dragged to the very forefront of the mind via the droned out landscapes of “To Amass an Army (Mandragora III),” the fiery attitude of “Sophora Tetraptera” and the doomed elegance that the almost choral aspect of album closer “Rhyncholaelia Glauca” possesses.
IV: Mandragora is likely to be the strangest thing we hear this year; unless of course The Botanist finds he has more to say, which is not entirely out of the question considering the amount of material this project has produced in such a short space of time.
The Botanist will rise. And we will lose this fight.
Enter the Verdant Realm to hear/order IV: Mandragora, or head on over to Flenser Records to order via the label.
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