pagan | Through the Shattered Lens

Here’s a song that captures bizarre pagan ritual at its most Dionysian. Barely coherent woodwinds teeter on the brink of madness, spurred on by seductive, primitive drumming and the string drone of what I’m guessing is a hurdy-gurdy. Piorun are a folk and ambient band from Poland, which is not a particularly active country in the pagan metal scene, but it should come as no surprise from the brand of folk they play that the band has ties to Nokturnal Mortum.

It’s not particularly easy to dig up information on these guys. What’s available to me had to be plugged through Google Translator from Polish, but I gather Stajemy Jak Ojce, the 2004 release on which Nadbuanski Wit is the opening track, is their only full-length album.

I’m a bit confused as to just how “Polish” Piorun really is. The references I saw to “ties with Nokturnal Mortum” are a bit of an understatement; Knjaz Varggoth, Saturious, and Munruthel are all a part of the line-up, amounting to half of the band and all of the folk elements. Of the band’s three presumably Polish members, two are only credited with vocals. One, and possibly all three, were members of the now defunct Polish black metal band Archandrja. (I’ve not heard them save a few youtube samples just now.)

At any rate, Stajemy Jak Ojce is an absolutely brilliant album when the folk is allowed to shine. When the ambient takes more primacy it leaves a little to be desired. Nadbuanski Wit falls firmly in the former. Whether you choose to hear it as chilling and demented or as ritualistic and reverent, it’s bound to leave a lasting impression.

October is a fine month for music. Everything from the cheesiest of black metal to the most ethereal of folk finds its home in a season which glorifies gore and the old gods together in a grand renunciation of conventional Christian values. I make an effort every year to present a sort of soundtrack to the season. Last year this amounted to a meager one post, but this go around I aim to do a song a day every day from now until the 31st.

The criteria will be two-fold: the song must be either dark, pagan, fantasy-oriented, or at least authentically folk; and I cannot have ever featured it on Shattered Lens before. It’s going to be an interesting ride. I feel at the moment completely out of touch with my music collection, and too hopelessly bereft of time to do anything about it. Musically, I spent the grand bulk of this year focusing on vgm. I must say the venture was eye-opening, and I have a much broader appreciation of video game music to show for it, but it’s a subject quite far from my typical focus. I will be putting my vgm series on hold for the month (it is incomplete anyway, and such a break will hopefully give me time to extend it), and focusing on music a bit more relevant to the season.

Today’s feature song is Tunturikukka by Finnish folk act Poropetra, taken from their self-titled 2004 demo release. While their full-length album features substantial rock influence, their demo is an outstanding example of uncompromised contemporary folk of the Finnish/Karelian variety. The band’s name is, according to Encyclopaedia Metallum, “the name of a mythological blue moose which travels through the sky”. Their founder, Juha Jyrkäs, has supposedly collaborated with folk metal legends Korpiklaani.

Tunturikukka is a track I’ve been keeping around for years now. I don’t recall when exactly I discovered the band, but I may have had it in my collection since the year of its release, and it still never fails to make an impression on me. I’ve always extracted a warm, sort of wintery vibe from the tune, and there’s something a bit reverent about it. From what I’ve read, I gather the lyrics pay ample homage to Finnish mythology, and on Tunturikukka most among the demo tracks I get a real sense of connection with the past.