I haven’t been listening to much recently. Game Of Thrones Season Six Soundtrack and that’s about it. So I’ve been trying to gather up what I’ve been missing. I start to feel ‘off’ if I go for a while without running into some new sounds.
Feeling hot, bothered and a bit desperate earlier on today, I did a random Google search for black metal released in 2017 and the band Ragana was buried deep in some list on some site of which I’ve forgotten the name.
In existence since 2011 Ragana is a ‘witch doom duo’ formed of Maria and Nicole. While I haven’t listened to much of their material just yet, I’m intrigued and impressed by the way they stir together bm, doom, punk and big, heavy doses of experimentalism.
“Metal is so intense. It’s so vulnerable. It’s so intimate. It’s so beautiful. It’s so dark. Women and queer people should be making that music. It just makes so much sense to me. And they do, all the time, and it is really metal.” – Maria
When I first listened to their track ‘You Take Nothing’ my head was like ‘hold on a minute…you’ve heard this before…back when you were 15 and had an obsession with In Utero and were still devastated that you never had the chance to meet Kurt Cobain before he killed himself.’ Yes folks. Prepare for a few moments of Nirvana nostalgia when you tune into this.
To begin with I was a bit unsure, my finger tentatively hovering over the little x in the right hand corner of my screen. But after about a minute, I was taken, head and heart, and didn’t want saving. Here it is for you, Have a listen. Let me know what you think. I’m going to go and lose myself in everything else they’ve ever done.
Celebrating the strange and the shadowy, the damned and unseen 