Premiere: Bash Your Heart on the Altar of Loss with a Masterpiece from Choshech
I could go into the whole "me and Choshech go way back" spiel, but I won't. Firstly, because I had the pleasure of premiering a EP from the band earlier this year, and because I already did the spiel. Secondly, because I don't feel like it. Life has been hard for everyone for the past few years, I think that's a gross understatement. It's been hard for people crushed in war, taken away by disease, poisoned further and further by the toxicity that seems to be taken over every iota of fresh air – metaphorical or real. I write about my own experiences here and there on this blog, most notably in the most recent AOTY "list," but things have gotten to the point of almost unbearable stress and anxiety.
All of that is more than enough to end or silence anyone's creativity. I know for myself it's been hard, very hard to try to do this thing I do as if everything's OK when naturally very little actually is. But Shay Mizrachi, the enormous soul and brilliant artist who is behind the drone/goth/black metal project Choshech isn't stopping. I haven't talked that much with Shay in the past few months. I don't go out, I don't go to shows, and I'm focused on maintaining what little sanity I have. And yet just form listening (and listening and listening and listening again) to his brilliant new album, A Journey into Silence I can tell you he's on the precipice of even having a voice. A fitting title, the journey here isn't actually into silence but a almost life-and-death struggle to keep from going silent. Gravity, the gravity of everything, like a black hole of sorrow, rage, and apathy is pulling you into silence. Is bringing more and more pain to the point that you think you might not be able to take anymore. But there's this engine, maybe a reflex, maybe a defense, that keeps you screaming, albeit at times quietly, just before the silence takes everything away.
Shay's voice here, and the atmosphere he creates are the perfect backdrop to a grossly imperfect times, floating around the black stratosphere of pain, of being too tired of pain to feel pain, while constantly visited by the myriad textures and voices the many guest appearances on this album provide – Tamar Singer (Zeresh), Michael Zolotov (Kadaver), LYS (夢遊病者 Sleepwalker), Dorin Hajon (Srefa), Zion Mizrachi (Katzon L'Tevach), Vlad Shusterman (Sleep's Sister / Ghost Bike), Stephan Friedman (Silence & Strength), Marcel P. (Miel Noir), Slava Kishka (Ketoret), and T.D. I already said I wouldn't do a MILIM KASHOT this year since I just couldn't find the motivation and strength to address the black hole in the room in any meaningful way. In a strange way I think this album actually does that for me. So, no need.
That's this album, an almost unprecedentedly beautiful refusal to stay silent, one that, as all great, like other truly great artists, takes the time not only to speak for oneself but to mourn for others. And there have been so many to mourn, much too many. This is their voice, too, in an album that will go down as not only one of the best artistic expressions of this horrid era but a document to what it was like to live here, heartbroken and afraid. An immediate classic.
It's out in a week or so. Do yourself a favor and listen to it now. You won't want to listen to anything else other than this meandering elegy to human life and this towering achievement of human resilience through art.
Listen to it now, allow your heart to be broken, and pre-order it so people like Shay can continue to create and (hopefully) never be silent.
