Akasha, Queen Of The Damned

 

 “They came to kill us, the traitors! They would blame it on the spirits; that was the plan. And all to eat the flesh again, the flesh of their mothers and fathers, and the flesh for which they loved to hunt. They came into the house and they stabbed me with their daggers, I their sovereign Queen. I fell as they slashed at me, as they drove their daggers into my breast. One cannot live with such wounds as I received; and so as I fell to the floor, I knew that I was dead! Do you hear what I am saying? I knew that nothing could save me. My blood was pouring out onto the floor. But even as I saw it pooling before me, I realized I was not in my wounded body, that I had already left it, that death had taken me and was drawing me upwards sharply as if through a great tunnel to where I would suffer no more!

I wasn't frightened; I felt nothing; I looked down and saw myself lying pale and covered with blood in that little house. Yet I did not care. I was free of it. But suddenly something took hold of me, took hold of my invisible being! The tunnel was gone; I was caught in a great mesh like a fisherman's net. With all my strength I pushed against it, and it gave with my strength but it did not break and it gripped me and held me fast and I could not rise through it. When I tried to scream I was in my body again! I felt the agony of my wounds as if the knives were cutting me afresh. But this net, this great net, it still had a hold of me, and instead of being the endless thing it had been before, it was now contracted into a tighter weave like the weave of a great silk veil.

And all about me this thing - visible yet invisible – whirled as if it were wind, lifting me, casting me down, turning me about. The blood gushed from my wounds. And it ran into the weave of this veil, just as it might into the mesh of any fabric. And that which had been transparent was now drenched in blood. And a monstrous thing I saw, shapeless, and enormous, with my blood broadcast throughout it. And yet this thing had another property to it, a center, it seemed, a tiny burning center which was in me, and ran riot in my body like a frightened animal. Through my limbs it ran, thumping and beating. A heart with legs scampering. In my belly it circled as I clawed at myself. I would have cut myself open to get this thing out of me! And it seemed the great invisible part of this thing - the blood mist that surrounded me and enveloped me - was controlled by this tiny center, twisting this way and that as it scurried within me, racing into my hands one moment and into my feet the next. Up my spine it ran.

I would die, surely I would die, I thought. Then came a moment of blindness! Silence. It had killed me, I was certain. I should rise again, should I not? Yet suddenly I opened my eyes; I sat up off the floor as if no attack had befallen me; and I saw so clearly! Khayman, the glaring torch in his hand! - the trees of the garden - why, it was as if I had never truly seen such simple things for what they were! The pain was gone completely, from inside and from my wounds as well. Only the light hurt my eyes; I could not endure its brilliance. Yet I had been saved from death; my body had been glorified and made perfect.” (Akasha, Queen Of The Damned)

“I would have you obey me without question, and then understanding would follow. But this is not your way. So fearless. Yes, I took your audience from you. I burnt away the arena in which you sought to shine. I stole the battle! But don't you see? I offer you finer things than you have ever reached for. I offer you the world, my prince.

Stop the tears you shed for Baby Jenks, and for yourself. Think on the mortals you should weep for. Envision those who have suffered through the long dreary centuries, the victims of famine and deprivation and ceaseless violence. Victims of endless injustice and endless battling. How then can you weep for a race of monsters, who without guidance or purpose played the devil's gambit on every mortal they chanced to meet!

I want you to understand. You are my instrument! And so the others shall be if they are wise. Don't you see? There has been a design to all of it - your coming, my waking. For now the hopes of the millennia can be realized at last. Look on the little town below, and on this ruined castle. This could be Bethlehem, my prince, my savior. And together we shall realize all the world's most enduring dreams.” (Akasha, Queen Of The Damned)

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

In this podcast I will make some observations about the great mother, the mother of all those condemned to the red nectar that leads to the life they no longer have. The Egyptian lady who bears the source of evil that plunges the damned into deep night. I will digress about the ancient Akasha and some feelings I had with the way Anne Rice ended up portraying her and which, in my view, was something too brief, it could have been something longer and not ended as abruptly as we see happening in the third book. Akasha and her brief appearance in the chronicles is somewhat ironic, since we are talking about the oldest existing creature in the universe created by Anne Rice. But to see this is to see, at the same time, how powerful and remarkable her appearance was; even brief, it left quite deep marks.

It is known that Anne Rice had a refined aesthetic in her writing. She writes with a very sensitive eye, with a clear sensory appreciation for what blossoms in her imagination. We are able to touch, taste and even experience phantom odors thanks to the descriptive way that Anne Rice chooses to portray her visions. She architects a crochet of words and intense feelings, full of poignant adjectives, rarely superficial. The typical pride of Lestat or the constant melancholy of Louis... the intensity with which the reader manages to get in touch with these feelings... this is nothing more than the vital force of the creativity that emanates from the writer in the words that she chooses to germinate throughout her life along the hundreds of pages written in red, which is her refuge and also her garden.

This feature has always been a constant in my experience reading The Vampire Chronicles. As a work that sheds constant light on the thoughts of a character, undresses momentary feelings, revealed in an intimate and crystalline way, the vampire chronicles are a type of reading that burns in the epidermis, that gives that heartache and leaves knots in the throat. It's a kind of reading that's impossible to do and expect us to come out of it without harm. And if it were to come out without harm, in my humble opinion it wouldn't be worth it, as it is a fundamental part of Anne Rice's writing the involvement that she promotes with the existential sufferings of the vampires that she values so much.

And, well... this is her intense driving... of sensitivity. Epithelial... like a sigh in the ear or fangs slowly running down the neck. Strong... sensitive... always. Until something happened to me... or rather... someone happened, which put me in a form of relationship and experimentation that, at the same time, left me intrigued, led me to the desire to discover, to unearth its mysteries and to know what was hidden behind her imposing figure. I speak of Akasha, of course.

I am not implying that by introducing Akasha, when finally her manifestation takes place in the book, that our sense of intensity with it has diminished. No, quite the contrary. It would be a total nonsense to say that with the right and disproportionate attack that Akasha performs right when she is awakened from her secular latency. What I want to say is that the form, the feeling she provokes in us is something quite different from what we had been feeling until then, having the books “Interview With The Vampire” and “The Vampire Lestat” as our retrospective.

Akasha is as intense or even more intense than Louis's worst days of depression, or Lestat's hysterical and pride-fueled attacks. However, I point out what there is to give and sell in the two passionate vampires and that is something very scarce in the great mother of the children of darkness: transparency. Everything, absolutely everything in Akasha has intensity, and an intensity not with the same proportion that exists in the others: in her everything is amplified, in a much superior level than other vampires who, in turn and in comparison to humans, already were in themselves just a bomb of sensations. This walking hyperbole that is Akasha also conveys to us the notion of source, of uncontrollable and unlimited power. It puts us in touch with something of the genesis, the origin of the gift of darkness and the curse it represents. Right away, she already distances herself from any and all comparisons with the characters known until then, even the most erudite, refined and powerful, like Marius. Anne Rice makes it clear that Akasha's being is at a level never seen before in "The Vampire Chronicles". And the author not only demonstrates this, but as is typical of her, she creates a sensory narrative experience with Akasha as she slowly introduces the vampire queen to us, always maintaining her aura of mystery.

Akasha is a gigantic and unnatural force. Something that conveys such a primal, primeval sensation that it leaves in our hearts the feeling that we are dealing with a long-dormant nemesis that manifests itself basically instinctually. It's as if nothing was accessible behind Akasha's eyes, her secret and motivation were always blurred and everything happened around her simply because she was there, absolutely not needing to move a rose petal for anything. If before we thought that the vampires who descend from the evil that inhabits the being of Akasha, if placed in comparison with humans, could be identified on the level of gods, the awakening of Akasha replaces them, through a fury and intense thirst for blood. In comparison, the other vampires are charlatan gods, insignificant and mere caricatures of what is in fact transcendent evil. It is as if the supposed gods of darkness, blind in their romanticism, had been reduced to mere cockroaches before the eternal, unshakable and irresistible goddess.

And the most interesting thing is that these sensations have a spokesperson, someone who introduces us to them and makes us approach this titanic force even before Akasha awakens. This spokesperson, our driver and the skin that makes us feel these sensations is Lestat. The fateful encounter with petrified Akasha and Enkil, presented by Marius, is the first moment where we have contact and accompany Lestat and the feelings that a being, apparently immobile and inert, still manages to awaken in him and, consequently, in us readers. He manages to dominate, invade and take care of his own being, without knocking on the door, prior notice. Lestat's ambiguity, represented by revulsion and, at the same time, an inexplicable need of desire for Akasha that attracts him like a magnet, makes us dive and feel the queen in our own soul. And it's something that also gives us a deep dimension of the gigantic extent of her influence. An inanimate corpse capable of provoking the most intense terrors and orgasms in a undead creature.

What I find curious about this bomb of emotions and great domination of us, the readers themselves, orchestrated by Akasha, is the sensation of paralysis and indescribability. The world is falling apart, the children of darkness mentally located, as they are nothing but the extension of her, her mother and source. All incinerated and sucked into the vortex of oblivion. And even with all this happening around us, we barely managed to move, move a single muscle, just like Lestat. This is something absurd, unexpected, something intriguing... that contradicts the need to manifest a basic preservation instinct that inhabits us from the first seconds of our existence. Akasha is mysterious... hypnotic, sexy and irresistible. She takes us to joy and mixes with pure horror. And what is most frightening is that, even as she moves, amplifying the influence of the feminine that inhabits her blood and womb, the womb of all vampires, she still terrifies us because apparently nothing, nothing stimulates the movement of a facial muscle in her. It's as if, by spilling blood and creating burning torches of desperate and terrified vampires by a truly divine power, superior to the mediocrity of what her egos believed to be the limit, she was not touched, moved sentimentally in any moment. Akasha is monstrous, because in the other vampires, even the secular ones, we still perceive some trace of humanity, as a way of thinking, expression of a worldview, the way they feel and taste things. This to Akasha seems to be something that she has not only experienced in its entirety, but now she is already beyond that, in another logic, practically split in how disconnected and alien in comparison to that of other vampires and mortals. It is as if we were dealing with such an ancient power, from such an ancient world, that something has already been lost in our consciousness, that element that would allow us a basic understanding of the senses and sensations that pulsate in this being that, although active, mobile and pursuer, behaves coldly and unshakably like the statue she was until her awakening.

Mystery, curiosity, intensity, physical and mental dominance... things that only the presence of Akasha is capable of infesting us, like a locust examination of a biblical plague of ancient Egypt. She's scary... but we want to see more of her, feel her more intensely. We were curious and provoked. We desperately want to know the reason for the existence that Marius, Lestat, Louis, Armand and many others live, chasing for centuries in the dirty and deserted streets of the old Europe and America. To me, this is the most notorious characteristic of Akasha: in cinema and literature, we are constantly presented with characters with disproportionate power and that leads us to wonder if there is, in fact, any hope of overcoming such an enormous force. And we see that here in Akasha... but that's not what makes the character shine. It is the fact that even though she possesses such strength, we are attracted to her and by her due to all the answers that we seek to acquire with her to fill in the gaps, the uncertainties... to obtain an argument, a justification to illusory create an order for chaos and a meaningless existence. Akasha sucks us into the quality that emanates from being her, of promise... promise of something more. When we reunite with something that we supposedly lost, we forget... that we want to relive, feel intensely again and that we can't necessarily do more. Original things, the essence of the first time when we met them... like, for example, the pleasurable and painful sensation of falling in love for the first time or even having enough enlightenment if such things really have any a priori sense. ... it's murky, it's enigmatic. But at the same time attractive. Vampires belong to her as an extension of her being... and she is chaos... but at the same time, she is almost impossible to resist, which in narrative terms is something very, very curious to watch and to accompany. Akasha is a femme fatale, in a sense. But the way of possessing and dominating, even with a strong sexual accent, is something even deeper than that. Even because to reduce her to that would be impoverish the queen a lot.

To me, Raven, the ambivalence that accompanies Akasha, which I have already mentioned, is one of the points that most help to build the mesmerism, the hypnotic sensation that she causes. That moves the search to understand her origin and her desire. And this ambivalence manifests itself in extremes inside and outside Akasha, as if by contagion... extremes that inhabit this millennial being, describably the most beautiful of all vampires that ever existed and who, at the same time, contains evil and cruelty unprecedented, capable of ridiculing the most scavenger of vampires. If Akasha were an angel, she would be the image of Lucifer himself, the most beautiful angel, theoretically with the greatest cognitive appeal, who, fascinated by his own beauty and lost in arrogance, created for himself a concept of his own paradise, different from that which God idealized. Where everything would revolve around him and embraced by his wings. Akasha mirrors this demonic beauty in much the same way, even when she is inactive, her marble skin bathed in moonlight. All supported by a serene face and hypnotic beauty, which seems not to realize the real evil that lives in itself and the way in which this same evil expands and infects everything it touches. And in moments like that, when, metaphorically, the vampirism of the chronicles approaches the concept of disease, I don't make this kind of reduction. But are elements that give us the possibility to digress about it.

The absence of compassion is notorious and, as I said, even when she leaves her petrified state, Akasha seems to carry something that makes us feel like an empty shell, inhabited by secrets and primal essences, but totally enveloped by selfishness and gigantic nihilism. In this sense, many of the oppressive attitudes, motivated by something of an obsessive nature, somehow appear, even briefly in Akasha, a need to return to something that was sacrificed in her, that she lost, the moment she left her humanity behind. Curious, isn't it? For it is something that, in a roundabout way, ended up becoming the cross of all her vampiric descendants. Akasha's brutality seems to contain, in a way that is unclear to her, something that speaks of an orphaned feeling, of a lost object or part. It points to a need to fill the empty shell that she has become or, perhaps, to something that tries, foolishly, to justify her own existence that has long since made no sense and that, due to her inability to die, made impossible by the passion she has for her self-image and ends up being pushed symptomatically over the centuries, in a way that even reveals psychotic traits, insane I would say. The considerations that Maharet did in relation to the queen of the damned are quite assertive in my understanding: in a perceptive way, Maharet recognizes the monstrosity that Akasha became very much due to the blindness that took her. To me, and in agreement with Maharet, I see that Akasha is a character who, when contemplating herself with pride and vanity in the waters of the ancient Nile or in modern mirrors, cannot see her true image, the image of a monster... she is always lost and numbed by the hallucinatory image of divinity she has created for herself.

And it is quite tragic to see this. Because, if we rescue the story of Akasha and her husband, Enkil, we see in her a visionary in the times when she was still human. A woman who had strong and determined moral values ​​in her identity that pointed to the beneficial transformation of people, the construction of a model of society with much more dignity. She pointed to the abandonment of cannibalism and the beliefs that encouraged the scourge. She was, in her origins, a ruler who indeed had pretensions and enough passion to carry out revolutions that would keep her people away from violence and bring about peace. Which soon began to crumble when she aroused an interest in trying out the occult, approaching the witches Maharet and Mekare. I do not intend in this topic to reveal the conflicting relationship between Akasha and the twins, but the relationship between occultism, frustration, repression and revenge was characterized in a chain of events that led to the appearance of Amel, a powerful spirit and source of evil that would be perpetuated through Akasha and would condemn anyone who came into contact with her blood.

I think I have already touched on all the points I wanted, since this podcast is not intended to create a summary. But, in fact, the answer that lies at her origin is a tragic one, from someone noble who was corrupted, scourged by her equals, prevented from having eternal rest, condemned to remain and condemn many others. The one who in the genesis nurtured deep humanity and had a visionary soul, ends up being corrupted by a chain of events of revenge, betrayal and use of forces not compatible with the world she wanted to create. The condemnation to darkness, the prolonging of existence and the slow perishing of any and all meaning led the queen of the damned to a mental state completely distant from that of her origin, led her to idealize a purification of the world (completely distorted concept) as a way of response to her symptom. It led her to idealize a second Eden on Earth, a female Eden where she would exist as the center and where everyone would be her own mirror. The great revolutionary, possessed by evil, turned into an empty shell by time and degenerated by mental illness, introjected and then reflected, materially, her symptom in the world, in her descendants and also, ultimately, in the human race, which was also part of the genocidal cleanup she had plans to carry out.

Corvid greetings!

Wednesday (Wandinha) - Ep. 1: Wednesday está cheia de aflição

[English Version] Akasha, Queen of the Damned

John Constantine Hellblazer - Ep. 2: Um Festim de Amigos

[English Version] Berserk - Slan (Suran): Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea

Berserk - Slan (Suran): Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

“Berserk”, the masterpiece of mangaka Kentaro Miura, is not only one of the most notorious graphic works in Japan, but also one of the most macabre and explicit. The medieval setting is bathed in concepts inspired by classics of western horror literature as well as the most undignified events in human history.

In Berserk, it is difficult to define what is more abominable: whether it is the fictional and supernatural aspect contained in this dark fantasy or the elements of the culture of barbarism manifested in the thousands of illustrations that Miura created during his life, which often remind us bitterly of the genocides that humans are capable of and far worse things than the monsters and diabolical entities of mythology. Interestingly, Miura portrays his antagonists as beings whose genesis lies in all the negative thoughts and feelings, acts of cruelty practiced throughout history, which astrally (and later materially) served as a substrate for their rebirth as abominations through a conscious structure that the author called “Aku no aidea” (Idea of Evil), which in turn translates as the encompassing of everything that man negatively produces (physically, spiritually, emotionally).

“Suran”, better known as “Slan” in the West, is one of the five entities resulting from this craft of flesh and spirit promoted by the “Idea of Evil”. In this select group of abominations of immeasurable power, known as the "Hand of God", capable of altering reality in sporadic manifestations on the material plane, Suran is the only one with a female aspect (although gender is no longer something that is so important for creatures so plagued and which, anthropomorphically, are the symbol of the maximum expressions of this scourge).

Suran, like the others, was obviously inspired by Clive Barker's work “The Hellbound Heart”. The resemblance to the English writer's cenobites is not a mere coincidence, both from an aesthetic and mental point of view. The notions of pain, pleasure, good and evil of these “angels” (in quotation marks) were pathologically distorted following a conceptual line very similar to that of Barker. And I selected “Suran” for this podcast not by chance, but because it is the most accessible and developed by Miura after Griffith (or Femto, as it became known after its conversion by the Idea of Evil).

In general, the manifestations of the others were very rare and punctual throughout the manga, which gave them an aura of mystery and clarified very little about their individual motivations (although the collective objective has always been to abandon the astral world and fully manifest itself in the material world – a goal achieved by them, in fact, in the later volumes of Miura’s work).

Miura, now deceased, took little care to introduce the reader to the origins and past human lives of these creatures. That said, it is a fact that Suran, in particular, manifested herself enough times so that we could develop a concept about her. We know, for example, that she is someone much more present in the lives of humans than one might suppose. The world of Berserk is tragic, hopeless, unfair, cruel and such elements, from an anthropological point of view, lead a great mass of desperate people towards the worship of divine beings (a fact that Suran willingly takes advantage of, since it is precisely this expression of human feelings that gave rise to beings like her, as I mentioned earlier).

In what Berserk offers in terms of famine, war, and other scourges of life, Suran has known how to drain human energy and thoughtforms to her own advantage. The evil that men do to themselves was useful so that she could offer subterfuges of carnal pleasure, a rare thing for the legions of miserable people in the world of Berserk. The reader will notice that this female demon, unlike the other members of the Hand of God, purposely received a much more minimalist aesthetic treatment from Kentaro Miura. Unlike the others, her form was not made with the intention of generating repulsion, but attraction. The black leather used in her bodice is quite similar to Hellraiser's style, but while in the others it is seen in most of her build (as it is also in Clive Barker's cenobites), in Suran it is the opposite: the bodice is the only thing she actually uses, in which Miura, then, gives greater prominence to her female forms, such as breasts, buttocks and genitals. Suran's form is idealized, very similar to the succubus concept found in Western literature, a trait that is further reinforced by the chiropteran wings she possesses.

Ultimately, Suran is a profane symbol of lust in the same way as a traditional succubus, but with some quirks and behavioral nuances that, in some ways, make her distinct from a typical female demon. If Suran were compared to a succubus, she would undoubtedly be their goddess. While it is expected that seduction, deceit and manipulation would be its main devices, Suran's power and status is so absurd and beyond any human resistance that the creature no longer cares so much about these judgment-numbing strategies, which Ubik, another member of the Hand of God takes precedence.

At least not until she finds a human with real potential to resist her, as with the protagonist Guts, which only makes her more interested and excited by him (in both senses). A demon is always a demon, and while Suran offers the extreme delight of the traditional succubus, the concept of her is infinitely more disturbing because of the powers granted her by the Idea of Evil. Among the poor, hungry and hopeless masses of Berserk, who seek in her cult the complete disinhibition of carnal pleasures (which can be seen, for example, in the orgies practiced by those who named her the “Goddess of Flame”), we can find concomitantly acts of cannibalism with absurd refinements of cruelty, made explicitly and worshiped with the same fervor.

It is in this sense that Kentaro Miura brings the traditional concept of the succubus closer to a facet closer to Hellraiser's cenobites: deception and manipulation, although they are also present elements, are not used by Suran with as much impetus as we see in Ubik. She, as the Whore Princess of the Uterine Sea, reveals that she is not merely the ultimate lust entity in the world of Berserk, but a perversely sadomasochistic lust. Like Clive Barker's cenobites, Suran's libido is manifested in extreme expressions of pain and pleasure and she literally orgasms with both, whether separately or together. Examples of this abound in the manga. During the Eclipse, Griffith's rape of Casca (before the eyes of a completely enraged Guts, cruelly forced to watch it all) brought Suran to tears (but not out of sadness, but satisfaction). Which is ghastly, evil and very frightening. Suran is ecstatic with Casca's pain, Griffith's pleasure and Guts' hatred, this set of elements in the same barbaric scene which she refers to as being "beautiful".

Another example could be seen during the events of the Qliphoth, where surprisingly Suran manifests again, molding his body with the guts of the trolls that had been torn apart by Guts. Since the Eclipse, Suran has developed an obsessive attraction to him, for the way he confronted the members of the Hand of God. Suran admires his stamina, his fortitude and especially the bestial hatred that the character has developed, which leads him to perform unthinkable feats for a normal human. It is precisely this hatred that gives its name to the manga.

Suran has a lustful fascination with Guts and this is the main reason for her appearances on a few occasions, thus making her the most present member of the Hand Of God in the material world after Griffith. Suran mocks Guts' persistence, his unshakable drive to destroy them all, especially Griffith. And among the most outstanding characteristics of the protagonist, the one that most interests Suran is precisely this unrestrained hatred, which made him capable of destroying several of the apostles of the Hand of God and reveals, at the same time, the enormous darkness that inhabits the character. Suran is increasingly attracted by this darkness, showing great pleasure in situations like the one that happened in the Qliphoth, where Guts pierces her with his gigantic sword and Suran demonstrates reaching a deep orgasm with it. If the reader hasn't noticed, there is a phallic symbology in the scene in question, sealed by the kiss that Suran, even impaled, gave Guts' lips in gratitude.

Berserk is a very interesting manga because it explains that its main antagonists, although they have a common goal, do not necessarily nurture a sense of self-preservation among themselves. Which, of course, makes Suran someone who doesn't give a shit if Griffith is directly affected by Guts. On the contrary: the character's lust and attraction for the black swordsman made her tempt him to accept a Behelit and transform into this disgusting thing that his apostles are. Hypothetically speaking, Suran gives the feeling that she would enjoy watching Guts eliminate Griffith in the same way she watched the manga's great villain and antagonist violate Casca. In theory, this is the essence of Suran, her sense of existence. What she elicits in humans, and at the same time her nourishment through their actions.

As a diabolical being who can conceive the entire design of causality (although she is not fully omniscient, as she could not foresee that Guts would survive the Eclipse), we can assume that Suran is certainly aware of much of the future events of Berserk. Which now, with Kentaro Miura dead, we'll never know. In any case, this almost omniscience decorated with all the adjectives described throughout my speech summarizes very well what kind of creature Suran is and some of the reasons why Kentaro Miura has placed so much emphasis on her throughout the work. Berserk was a manga completely unsuitable for minors in its first arcs and it is a fact that Miura made it much more accessible over the decades, perhaps due to the conquest of a large audience (which means the possibility of more sales). In any case, whatever he did with Suran and however he ended the (now forever unfinished) work, the unspeakable horrors and sensations elicited by her were immortalized in Japanese horror, in a way that, for many, it certainly must have been a traumatic experience. As much as the work was never kind, it could never have prepared the reader for the hell orchestrated by the harlot princess of the uterine sea and her cronies.

Corvid greetings!

[English Version] Unlucky Morpheus - Vampir: Fuki's Vampire Facet

Unlucky Morpheus - Vampir: Fuki's Vampire Facet

Hello my dears. I am the Raven who speaks to you.

On my channel, themes related to Japanese culture and other more European ones, such as vampirism, are quite recurrent. And making this brief communication about a little Unlucky Morpheus album called Vampyr is something more than natural and expected here in my domain. At almost 27 minutes long, if we also consider the cover track “Vampire” in the tracklist, Vampyr is a short work. However, it is completely dedicated lyrically, musically and visually to vampirism, both in terms of the classical and literary musical roots from the European continent, as well as the more oriental side, characteristic of Japanese pop culture and present in anime and manga. We can certainly consider Vampyr a small concept EP, since vampirism is its only topic of interest and this realization makes it a distinct album within the Unlucky Morpheus discography.

Before we talk a little bit about it in lyrical and melodic terms, I think it's assertive to remember what the professional situation of vocalist Fuki and guitarist Yukimura Hirano (better known as Shiren) was like at that moment. As you may already be aware, Fuki and Shiren had a long-standing partnership, for several years, publishing mini-albums under the name of Unlucky Morpheus, within what we call “doujin” and “doujinshi”. Refreshing the memory of the most forgotten, the term “doujin” does not necessarily refer to musical characteristics; doujin refers to any type of practice in pairs or groups of friends who share a common interest. Any creation that features joint work between friends who share a common passion can be called a doujin. The term “doujinshi” is used to classify publications originating from doujin, it is the final product, completely independent, made with its own resources and launched by a doujin duo or group.

Fuki and Shiren worked like this for years on end, publishing several music albums under the name of Unlucky Morpheus, but completely geared towards Touhou (very different from what they do today). However, they never considered the partnership as their main breadwinner: it was just a leisure activity. Fuki was the lead singer of the band Lightbringer and Shiren worked in several other lesser bands, without the same visibility as Fuki's band, which, let's face it, wasn't very famous either.

However, everything would change with the release of Lightbringer's “Monument” album, in 2014. At that moment, its members decided to go on hiatus (which I now believe is permanent given the success that Unlucky Morpheus has achieved). With no chance of Lightbringer ever being reunited, I highly doubt it. But, returning to the central subject, so it was from 2014 that Fuki was literally without a job. However, this was not the same as Shiren's reality. At that time, he was working on two projects with vocalist Yui Itsuki: the main and most important was the band Yousei Teikoku and the second, which was more experimental and without much commitment, was called Denkishiki Karen Ongaku Shuudan. The bonus song we find in Vampyr, called Vampire, by the way is a song from this side project by Yui and Shiren, where the guitarist wrote the music while the vocalist took care of the lyrics. As an additional curiosity, know that Yukimura Hirano did not use the stage name Shiren in Unlucky Morpheus at that time: the first time he used this nickname was with Yousei Teikoku and, in Unlucky Morpheus, he would only adopt it from Vampyr.

Returning to Fuki, she was running out of time and in need of work. With Lightbringer's hiatus and Doll$box showing no sign of continuity, as the other girls in the band were busy with their main project, Gacharic Spin, for the first time in many years Fuki was in hot water. That said, Yousei Teikoku has not achieved the expected success either. And combining the useful with the pleasant, Fuki and Shiren then decided to make Unlucky Morpheus a more authorial and professional work, releasing for the first time an album entirely made up of original songs. This album was Affected, released in 2014; it is the work that we can really consider, in fact, as the starting point for Unlucky Morpheus as an authorial band, as we know it today.

But I need to make some important caveats: Affected was a trio effort only. Shiren has always had the guitar as his main instrument and, secondarily, the keyboard. But he was also the one who played bass on the album and the drums were artificially programmed, by software. In other words, it was Shiren who did all the instrumentation, just like he did on Touhou's albums. The only real difference we have with Affected is that, from that moment on, Unlucky Morpheus was going professional, working only with original material and opening up a wider range of musical themes as well. Fuki took vocal responsibility and continued writing the lyrical part. And as the third member, they invited vocalist Tsuyoshi Denshirenji (better known as Kasumi) to work with them again; Kasumi was a constant presence on Touhou's Unlucky Morpheus albums and it is precisely in Vampyr that he makes his last appearance.

Vampyr is musically an evolution compared to Affected in that Unlucky Morpheus invited more musicians to join them. Ogawa and Jinya (who in the future would join the band as a full-time bassist and guitarist) are not yet present on Vampyr, but this album symbolizes drummer Fumiya Morishita's debut as an official member. Jill and her adorable violin are also present in Vampyr, but she is referred to here only as a guest musician. Takahisa Sato (who along with Kasumi also contributed backing vocals) also receives a mention as a guest musician.

In Jill's specific case, I imagine that Fuki and Shiren still didn't fully know her musical abilities and her level of professionalism, although Jill's work at Rose Noire, in my humble opinion, was already more than enough to ensure her level as a violinist, making perfect transcriptions of progressive and neoclassical music for the instrument. But as the Japanese tend to be a little more methodical and systematic than the Westerners, I appreciate that Vampyr served as a probationary stage for Jill, which becomes somewhat ironic when we realize the musical level change that the violinist brought to Unlucky. Morpheus later. I've mentioned this more than once and I say it again, categorically: if Unlucky Morpheus has reached the level of musicianship that it has today, much is due to Jill's absurd talent; among the band members, she is by far the most talented, daring and technically capable of extracting virtuosity from her instrument. And although she is more shy on Vampyr (which was expected and natural for being a contracted instrumentalist, working to specifications and with no room for improvisation), still Jill considerably enriches the musicality of the work, placing it a notch above Affected.

But now let's talk a little about music itself, its structure and constitution. The lyrical part was entirely in charge of Fuki, as I mentioned previously. The only exception was the cover song Vampire, written by Yui Itsuki and which, personally, I consider a little out of place in this EP. I imagine that Shiren, having worked with a vampire song before, suggested to Fuki to insert it as a bonus in the work. Musically speaking, that's exactly what it is: something additional, as it doesn't dialogue so well with the sound of the other tracks written for Vampyr, although it's not a throwaway song. It's just a matter of concept that I make this point, largely because of the organic and fluid way that Vampyr's songs dialogue with each other.

In terms of music, Vampyr presents a fusion of various genres to effectively deliver what Fuki wanted. This album is her concept, although it was Shiren who wrote all the instrumental parts. The starting point for conceiving Vampyr was Fuki's love for a shounen anime with supernatural elements called JoJo no Kimyo na Boken, better known in the West as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Fuki, always a nerd and a card-carrying otaku, loves this anime with passion and it was the one who inserted her a little in the vampire universe, starting to consult other western references as well. Fuki wanted to make an album about vampires and no one would get that idea out of her head.

And to achieve this goal, it would take much more than musical lyrics compatible with the theme: as it is historical and traditional, vampirism also has a particular aesthetic in the field of music, it demands a type of characteristic sound that allows the listener to associate the instrumental melody with the visual and behavioral aspect of a vampire. And that forced Shiren to listen and revisit a particular and secular musical tradition, which is romantic music, a classic style that was widely spread between 1800 and 1910. Basically, any work that adapts vampires, whether in music, film or TV, incorporates a little bit of the main technical and aesthetic elements of romantic music. This is the classic style of composition that explores melodies with a more closed and nocturnal mood, with a ghostly atmosphere, with an accentuated fascination with the past, the mystical and the supernatural. That expresses a desire for immortality and whose expression and narrative tends to focus, instrumentally, on a more autobiographical and individualistic footprint. If you read the books by Le Fanu, Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, as well as watch the film adaptations of their works, it is the elements of classical romantic music that you will find in these works; such vampires are a very specific period cut.

With Fuki's guidance, Shiren needed some inspiration from this style and it will show up in Vampyr. But, as you may be aware, Fuki and Shiren from the beginning have always been Power Metal musicians. It was this genre that really inspired them and the one they approach most competently. Due to the need to incorporate elements of romantic music, Fuki and Shiren ended up being forced to overcome their limitations and expand their scope and this was great, because it is common knowledge that there is hardly a genre more stereotyped than Power Metal. Researching romantic music led Fuki and Shiren to also get in touch with Gothic music, in order to better characterize the vampire atmosphere needed in Vampyr, which portrays a dark world, of ruined castles and claustrophobic monasteries. The Gothic style carries in its aesthetic elements that belong to the ancient world, a constant aura of morbidity (of something that lies dead or is asleep). The vampiric evokes such concepts, demands them strongly and the music will have to communicate this aspect.

In order to achieve the goal, Fuki and Shiren incorporate to Power Metal the elements that I am mentioning, making Vampyr's sound more dramatic, using dark arrangements and melancholic melodies, mixing romanticism, existentialism, sadness and bestial aggression. Vampire music is always a song of tension, whether in the most extreme and strident part, or in the light and sweet. And this encounter of Power Metal (which is a more modern and contemporary style) with classical romantic music was the factor that made it possible to characterize as neoclassical what Unlucky Morpheus did in Vampyr. Everything was done out of necessity, as Power Metal and its stereotypical characteristics wouldn't be able to portray vampirism properly. Therefore, as a synthesis that I make to you, we can characterize Vampyr's music as a Power Metal with a neoclassical reference of romantic music, with a symphonic and harmonically gothic characteristic. Basically, it was this sound that Unlucky Morpheus built on Vampyr and it was a milestone for the band, which would not abandon this approach on subsequent albums. This configuration of trends and concepts made the sound of Unlucky Morpheus much more attractive and interesting compared to more traditionalist Power Metal bands.

The album Vampyr opens with a brief instrumental introduction of the same name, where Shiren opts for a piano with a dense atmosphere, loaded, but which strangely incites a certain peaceful feeling, perhaps due to the sound of bells and the gothic chants inserted in the accompaniment. It's a brief introduction, but properly assertive and that sets the stage for the real opening track: the very heavy Opfer.

Opfer is an excellent business card. As the first impression is the one that stays, the band would have to do their best, right? And Fuki surprises right away because, in addition to her traditional operatic vocals, with high range, she also explores the lower spectrum of her vocal cords, something she didn't do much in the previous works of Unlucky Morpheus. Listening to Opfer live is always a delight and I recommend that. In addition to listening to the studio version, you can also check out the singer's interpretation on the 2017 album, called LIVE. Fuki's bass and vibrato are phenomenal in this version, demonstrating a more aggressive and bestial side of her, different from the fluffy and typically anisong of Touhou's previous albums. And Opfer doesn't stop there in terms of aggression: the only really melodic instrumental moment of this track is during Shiren's solos, which are still accompanied by a rather brutal rhythmic base. In melodic terms, there's a very interesting escalation. But the guitars and drums, in 90% of the composition, were made to be really killers. The riffs are serious, intense and vary between cadence and repetition at high frequency, something that reminds us a little bit of riffs of the djent genre. No wonder Shiren chose to use a seven-string guitar in this work. Jill's violin, in turn, accompanies these riffs in an extremely pertinent way, as it is his melody that opens up the sound a little more, makes the access route more pleasant. And I couldn't help but mention the contrast that Fumiya's double bass also provoke in Opfer: as we've never heard Unlucky Morpheus use anything like that before, they're an extra element that positively surprises in terms of metal.

The junction of the instrumental part with the lyrical part contributes to the rise of an atmosphere of majesty, characteristic of a master vampire. Which in Opfer doesn't happen by chance. The song was inspired by an independent manga by Ogi-Atsu called Blood Smoker. Atsu is the artist who designs the covers of Unlucky Morpheus and this work of his, in particular, is themed around vampirism. The songs Opfer and Angreifer, from this EP, will narrate textual elements of Atsu's work, putting their spotlight on the same vampire. Opfer, in this case, is responsible for describing the character's transformation and the process of discovering and controlling his supernatural abilities. There is also an accent on the creature's psychic aspects, such as the desire for dominion, the deceit contained in its eyes and the pomp maintained by someone of noble descent. A faint trace of insanity is mentioned and soon emphasized by scarlet-stained claws and fangs. Opfer works a lot with the allegory of vampiric misery, of the being that loses the most precious asset: life itself. And he still finds time, in the midst of this torment of the dispossessed, to simultaneously approach the allegory between the hunter and the beast, an obvious allusion to Abraham Van Hellsing and Dracula, characters of the late Bram Stoker.

But Fuki's classic discoveries wouldn't stop at Opfer, anyway. In La Voix Du Sang, the Japanese explores an even older reference: in this song, she will sing about the lesbian vampire Mircalla, created by Sheridan Le Fanu and who performs in the work, covertly, under the name Carmilla. A curiosity is that the title of the song, which can be freely translated The Voice of Blood, in Japanese used different characters, which allow us to translate the expression as “Connected by Blood”, which makes much more sense: the song does not it is more than an account of Laura, the young woman who is completely lost and hypnotized by the charms of the beautiful and diabolical Carmilla. Totally surrendered to the vampire's charm. Note that Fuki, in the lyrics, does not directly mention the names of the female characters, but the narration of events is totally associated with the dynamics between them. The lyrical part explores the description of the setting, emphasizing the ambiguous aspect of Carmilla, the uninvited guest. The nightmare in the form of a beauty who walks sensually under the moonlight, the cold and charming damn woman moving in the shadows and giving her vampiric kiss while the helpless young woman lies in a deep sleep.

La Voix Du Sang exudes lyrical theatrics, which in turn is greatly enriched by instrumental touches. Jill, in this case, has a fundamental role here: the violin has a clean tone and tuning, which is lovely to listen to. The composition is still heavy and energetic, but much less than Opfer, as it works on a more seductive vampire concept, which opts for seduction rather than aggression. Jill's violin, in this case, helps to build a magical and dramatic aura closer to an erotic fantasy, more compatible with the concept of Carmilla, a bat that pretends to be a butterfly.

The album then moves on to the concept track that initially inspired Fuki. This is Phantom Blood, which is descriptive and very literal of the events of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. The name of the song, by the way, refers to the first arc of the manga, which runs from volume 1 to 3. In short, the work revolves around the Joestar family, one of the richest and most traditional in the world. The Joestars, at a certain point, adopt a young man named Dio Brando, who has a mysterious past and who gradually reveals that he is not exactly who others thought he was. In the Phantom Blood arc, we are introduced to Jonathan Joestar, the son of the family's patriarch and the protagonist of this arc, the one who will resist Dio Brando and his macabre stone mask, which gave him the vampiric powers he possesses.

I need to stress that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was undoubtedly very influential in Japan and the world. Especially in the field of fashion. The work is well set and is far from bad, but it is in the visual aspect that Hirohiko Araki really found his differential. His character designs are exotic and whimsical, purposefully exaggerated and it was this element that really impressed Fuki. As listeners may know, Fuki loves clothes: she creates the concept and sews the entire band's wardrobe herself, not just her own. Musically, Phantom Blood is Vampyr's most accessible track. It is a typical anisong and was created for this purpose, with catchy riffs and an arena chorus, to be sung with the audience.

The regular EP finally finds its conclusion in Angreifer, which musically speaking is the highlight of Vampyr. The album opens and closes with the same concept and very solidly. The composition is the longest of the work, reaching 7 minutes in length and was written with the intention of being a true epic. Angreifer is the most complete composition of Vampyr, the music that brings together all the classical and modern concepts that I mentioned at the beginning of my explanation. Years later, when Shiren developed tenosynovitis that prevents him from playing guitar very often, he took up the band's bestial vocals. The dynamic between him and Fuki is typical of the Beauty and the Beast concept, as is common in many bands in the symphonic genre. But Angreifer is interesting because it has already presented this tendency to us years before, which in my view is also a noteworthy fact.

The opening of the track has a very classic approach, including with regard to the guitar. Shiren will convince in Angreifer if he hasn't already done so; some of the scales he uses are very pleasant, typically novelist-sounding and, as usual, Jill helps make it even more pleasant thanks to the contrast between the tones of both instruments. The use of choir here is fundamental to the harmonization and setting of a metal epic. The chorus is one of the most enjoyable in the band's discography, thanks to Fuki's intonation and the clean, resonant notes she chooses. Fumiya, meanwhile, is also noteworthy, because in Angreifer he has more time and space to open his toolbox, playing with plenty of versatility, control, and adding lots of super-fast, accurate drum increments.

Lyrically, Angreifer takes up the vampire story narrated in Opfer. In this song, Fuki will work with the vampire duality, of a hybrid being (that is part human, part beast). Initially, she narrates the young vampire's resistance to his new cursed condition and, later, the moment where he succumbs and surrenders completely to his evil nature.

Conceptually, it's Angreifer that Vampyr ends up with. But as I mentioned, there is also a bonus, which is the Vampire song. The Unlucky Morpheus cover is much better than the original version and ends up serving as a complement to everything that was previously presented, with much more refinement. Here, we have a lyrical presentation of a vampire's behavior, aesthetic sense and destructive tendencies. But the music, as a whole, can easily pass for an anisong, as it has become accessible to the masses by avoiding too loud and aggressive distortions. Anyway, there are good moments from Shiren in this song, where he shows off a little bit through shred and also tapping during the solos.

Other than that, I have nothing to add. To the lovers of Unlucky Morpheus, I hope that the presentation was to your liking. To everyone who has come this far, I leave a tender hug in thanks and my traditional corvid greetings.