Codeine, “Loss Leader”:

Following a foray to the West Coast with Josh, the band went through the process of auditioning a full-time drummer. “It was like stepping on kittens,” says John. “It was really hard watching them try to play at our speed.”

Nortt’s use of guitars on Ligfaerd echoes Codeine’s: a chord is struck, then left to decay. Codeine play nicer chords: minor sevenths, or ninths, with a rich distortion unlike Nortt’s blackened buzz. But the dynamic is much the same: like a sounding gong or a clashing cymbal. It maps onto the bodily experience of exhaustion, each breath and each step a fresh and painful effort. “I want to walk, / but I have to crawl” (Codeine, Wird). What keeps going here is pure drive, the body’s inane refusal to die even when every possible source of nourishment or satisfaction has been choked off or withdrawn.

The slow tempo is a drag; it takes tremendous discipline not to speed up, not to put some more life into it. This music is supposed to drag you down; as Come’s Submerge puts it, “now we sink so softly / now we sink so deeply / … / just relax, just relax, just relax…”. Depressive black metal afficionadoes speak of the “dark tranquility”, the diffuse bleakness of a sound-world without punctum, without impetus. You’re going nowhere. You’re staying here, wherever “here” is (adrift, placeless, unmoored).

“The world is frozen now, / it glitters, sparkles and shines” (Codeine, Smoking Room).

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