Band:	Jute Gyte
Album:	Impermanence
Style:	Ambient, Noise, Experimental black metal
Release date:	November 14, 2011
Guest review by:	Alina Zia

01. Meaninglessness And Waste
02. The Wild Rain
03. Partial Wing
04. Impermanence
05. Hermit Haunter Of The Lonely Glen
06. The Old Hills' Indifference
07. A Wind Sways The Pines

Impermanence is a sublime and inimitable exordium to the second ternion of black metal albums by Jute Gyte. Redolent of the caducity of feuillemort leaves in nemorous vastitudes starkly contrasting against griseous, empyreal flocculencies, the tenuous gossamer of a chimeric dream, marcidity of diseased flesh bedeviled from delassation, the exanimate vestiges of a putrefying body and exility of bony detritus, Impermanence is an exquisite indagation into the fugacity of human existence and the desideratum of sempiternity in a factitiously romanticized world circumscribed by commentitious ternary embodiments of personal temporality: past, present, and future. Impermanence epitomizes the yearning for transcendence in nonspatialized and nontemporal totality.

The title track, "Impermanence" begins with robotic glitch effects and the crackling of incalescent flames before the gentle plucking of ukulele strings. The track closes with a diaphanous crepitus from arboreal combustion and machinic sounds circumscribing the dulcet mellifluity of the ukulele. The transcendental limpidity and plangency of imbricating, exquisitely nuanced plucking patterns also preponderates "Senescence" and sections of "Griefdrone" from Senescence.

"A Wind Sways The Pines" is the pièce de résistance of Impermanence, showcasing the languescent glissando and voluptuous richness of anfractuous lap steel guitar leads. A metal tube used as a slide vacillates between intervals, counterpoised by the unvarnished astringence of intertwining riffs in slightly progressive song structures that not only prevent the guitars from becoming exanimate by repetition but also serve as a portentous presentiment. These digressive formats, engendering a riptide of gelid, farraginary disquietudes, substantialize the primordiality of our insuperable need for causality in unambiguous totality. The fey yet plaintive timbral essence, the sinuosity, and the languor of the lap steel guitar passages, with musical inflections incandescent with dolorific emotions on "Meaninglessness And Waste", "Partial Wing", "A Wind Sways The Pines" and "Hermit Haunter Of The Lonely Glen" are a prescient aural manifestation of disillusionment that begets existential incertitude.

Though I found the first half of "The Wild Rain" bland, at the 6:30 mark a ponderous, bass-heavy stoner doom/blackened sludge riff sprauchles along, later caparisoned by two other riffs weaving over one another to form a daedal pattern and an unco combination that is aurally stimulating, amalgamating the abrasiveness of blackened sludge with whiffs of murky grunge. The lyrics of "The Wild Rain" remind me of the petrichor of irriguous soil as a deluge revivifies sere, desiccated land lying in its despairful desolation, vitrescent waters reflecting the pensive cast of one's azoic countenance. "Partial Wing" reinforces the incandescent melancholy and corporeal gelidity superinduced by dreich environs with the feyness of circuitous lap steel guitar passages counterpoised by cunning tremolo-picked riffs. I love the strange melody of a clean lap steel arpeggio at the 2:40 mark, commencing soon after the smooth plucking of guitar strings. This is followed by tremolo-picked riffs starting at 4:19 before the same slide arpeggio resurfaces at 5:47. At 7:05, a vacillatory glissando on the lap steel accentuates the forlorn wistfulness suffusing the track. "Partial Wing" finally closes with more glitch sounds that catenate it to "Impermanence". The intro of "Hermit Haunter Of The Lonely Glen" is cathected with the emotivity of Kalmbach's gutturals, the ersatz cudgeling of programmed drums, and macerating riffs in the ensorcelling atemporality of a vortiginous maelstrom of lap steel guitars before the music fades into discord. A sense of calm pervades the track at the 3:45 mark with the pleasant plucking of guitar strings.

The properties of lap steel guitars make them suitable for the microtonal melodies utilized by Jute Gyte. A lap steel guitar is held horizontally such that the body of the guitar faces upward, with strings elevated slightly to avoid contact with the neck. It is played not by fretting the strings but by sliding an object, usually a metal tube, across the strings, vacillating between intervals or notes. In his more recent works, Kalmbach has used a microtonal guitar with an augmented number of intervals; the addition of more frets splits the fretboard into 24 segments, thereby dividing the scale into 12 half-steps and rendering the frets more efficacious as they offer a range of dissonant sounds.

I feel that the technical finesse displayed by Impermanence far supercedes the mediocrity of Verstiegenheit, divagating more toward traditional black metal roots, progressive black metal flourishes, microtonality, and sludge abrasivity as Kalmbach engages in a wide array of styles, rendering it a more accessible version of his avant-garde sensibilities.