Ethereal Shroud - Trisagion

 

The release of Trisagion, Ethereal Shroud’s sophomore album, came with the announcement that this is the last album. Joe Hawker, the mastermind behind Ethereal Shroud and sole member, decided to close this chapter and start anew. He has already released an Ep from his new project, Wisp, which I haven’t gotten around it yet, but from what I’ve read, it is not a continuation, but a different approach to his vision.

In 2015, Ethereal Shroud released They Became The Falling Ash, an album that quickly became a favorite and a classic in the atmospheric black metal circles. Joe Hawker, through Ethereal Shroud, relies heavily on atmospheres created by the guitars and the keys, giving a sense of a majestic journey into the heart of our being. It is a journey filled with emotions, and said emotions can be overwhelming, almost unbearable, because most of the times they are built gradually, following a spiral built up around a central melodic theme. In this way, songs that last around half an hour can feel like a short story, where the story arc is completed with the completion of the song.

In every album in metal we, most likely, are given the choice to either read the lyrics and feel the song in a more complete way, bringing us closer to the musicians intent, or to let go and just take this journey as it unfolds and allow our imagination to create stories of wonder and magic and dread and walk on whichever road it may lead us.

I generally read the lyrics and most of the times I am disappointed by them, mostly because I cannot create a story that can hold them together along with the music. But when the lyrics have cohesion and flatter the music, then the results can be impressive. This is one of these rare cases, where both the music, including the voice as an instrument, and the lyrics work together successfully.

If you read the lyrics of Chasmal Fires without the music, you will most likely feel the narrator’s distress, his dread and his ache for a lost part of himself, which is promised by the church, but at the same time it is taken away. He concludes with the existential sentiment of a man being contorted by the dogma, instead of actually achieving what is promised through the sacrifice of the Song of God: which is completion of our being through salvation. All this understanding and criticism revolves around the hypocrisy of the clergy. These lyrics express this sentiment clearly:

“We cannot pretend that the rules are the same for the blasphemer and the saint,

We cannot pretend that the rules are the same for the commoner and the priest.”

Trisagion was released close to the end of 2021 and had I listened to it earlier, it would have been included in my best of the year list. The first thing that intrigued me was of course the title. Trisagion means ‘thrice holy’, a standard hymn in all Orthodox churches and it goes like this:

“Ἅγιος ὁ Θεός, Ἅγιος ἰσχυρός, Ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς.

Hágios ho Theós, Hágios iskhūrós, Hágios āthánatos, eléēson hēmâs.”

 

And its translation is: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.”

Right from the start we understand that the album deals with religious matters. Whether these matters are personal or not, are to be made known after we spend some time with the lyrics. Another idea concerning the title is, of course, that the album has three songs. Maybe it is a combination of these.

Maybe Trisagion is an album with three epic songs, dealing with the relationship of man with what is holy, beginning from distrust and the feeling of being betrayed, which is followed by the clear seeing of what it really is, a Discarnate form that led the wrath of man to wield the sword, and concludes with the departure of the narrator unto the stars, like an Astral Mariner, where he has finally found peace.

This album is an hour long journey in whichever world you feel most comfortable being. Whether it is the stars or the bottom of the sea, the music played here is the vehicle that will take us to where we need be.