The luxury of 20 years in existence offers a wondrous opportunity to look back and reflect on time and experiences. It’s a non-insignificant amount of time; a fifth of a century, and a decent chunk of life for us humans who average around 70-80 years on this increasingly weird orb. For Nechochwen, it seems to manifest a little more literally.
Earning their name in the metal world by blending fierce black metal with traditional Appalachian folk and a big slant toward Indigenous and Native American history, tradition, and folklore, their earlier works like Algonkian Mythos have taken a backseat, if only because it’s been so long since its 2008 release and it being the first project the then-fledgling band put out after forming in 2005. But we are who we are, and it’s really, really hard to run from the past. More so than most music projects, Nechochwen are wholly indebted to their past and ancestry because of the themes and spiritual power they ensconce themselves and their music within. spelewithiipi is the burgeoning of that past, a forgotten tree breaking ground to show its beauty anew to an audience that perhaps missed out before, like me.
Like many, I came across Nechochwen well into their blackened phase – 2015’s The Heart of Akamon struck just when it had to when I was exploring extreme metal more and became one of my favorite albums of all time. Subsequent releases proved it was anything but a fluke, with their most recent release Kanawha Black being a very strong contender for my second fave of theirs. I just love the band, and not only for their heavier proclivities – it’s more about the soul, and folk roots have always been at the center of what the band has done.
For me, since I do have to have some sort of ‘hook’ to really get into folk and folkish music, it all comes down to ambience and passion. Technicality and melody in folk aren’t the same as it is in heavier, distorted, often more electrically dependent music, at least in my very, very limited exposure. My biggest way into music like this is through video games or movies, where folk fits the stripped-back aesthetics of the settings, its characters, or its themes, so me sitting down with an album like spelewithiipi on its own shouldn’t be seen as just a commitment and trust to Nechochwen as a band, but a consent and desire to explore something different with them.
spelewithiipi honors the Ohio River, referring to the album as ‘the sound of rivers that remember, of trails worn by centuries of footsteps, of stories whispered through leaves and stone‘ on Bandcamp. To that poetic end, the album masterfully builds a sonic world where relation to nature is the key, and perhaps the only, component. Empathy for the earth echoes in each track here, oftentimes captured by the moan of the guitar like on “Precipice of Stone”, others more explicitly like the cinematic sound profile of “othaškwa’alowethi behme” which might function more as an interlude of sorts, but manages to be one of the more engaging tracks on the album. No vocals and honestly that was a good call – the instrumentation is undoubtably the voice here and all you need.
There is a primal prettiness to spelewithiipi, one that I’m not frankly prepared to engage with on a truly meaningful level, but can still absolutely appreciate as someone who has cursorily stayed apprised of natural and environmental issues over the years. I unequivocally want what is best for our lands and I really don’t care who or what it inconveniences. I wince when I see generative AI used knowing the impact it has on our world, not to mention its soulless creations that work as a pretty staunch antithesis to how I view art. These are more ethical asides rather than part of a deeper philosophy I have, but my point is that spelewithiipi beckons a similar connectedness aside from just ‘enjoying nature’ as I and many others do. There’s no urge to worship, but there is one to appreciate, take note of what we still have, and nurture it. Greater, richer powers will surely limit our ability to adequately do so, but to stand up for the world when so often the world cannot is, if nothing else, an imperative that I wish a lot more people took seriously.
For as dark as reality is, spelewithiipi feels separate from it, maybe not fully disconnected because I don’t think the duo would seek to attempt to create something in a vacuum, but the focus is absolutely on the beauty of it all. It’s the petrichor coming through my window as I write this. It’s the twinkling of the rare nighttime star in suburbia. It’s the passing of leaves from the tree to the cradle of the ground in fall. Between earthen percussion, pensive though at times energetic guitars (see “mthothwathiipi” for some awesome, agile melodies), and other traditional instrumentation that vies to represent something much bigger than itself, this is Nechochwen at some of their finest.
If your first reaction to talk of this album is ‘what can it do for me?’, I’d wager this isn’t an album for you. While it’s definitely personally fulfilling and enjoyable, it’s not something you wish to actively take from. Much like nature itself, spelewithiipi feels ready and willing to give, but without the enforcement of such a relationship or agreement. It’s innate, just like how the Indigenous peoples of the world communed and lived with the land many years before imperialist expansion everywhere started driving us down a much more violent, transactional pathway. I think more than anything else, Nechochwen remind of simpler times – for themselves and the rest of us. My only question now is… how the hell do you pronounce ‘spelewithiipi‘?
