Review Summary: With its first release of post-demo material, Abigor creates an unparalleled statement in the genre of black metal by refining its techniques into simpler forms.
Many excellent albums do not seem as such at first. Sometimes there are depths of subtlety to plumb before coming to understand a work's greater value; other times, there is simply so much going on that a lot of it gets lost without a very attentive listen.
Orkblut - The Retaliation is one of the latter.
Whereas Abigor's music up until this point had been composed largely of an alternation between counterpoint and polyphony, here they adopt an entirely different approach. The key element in the music on this EP is that it is, primarily, expositional - a short, quiet, often acoustic piece will set forth a set of basic melodic ideas, which the following longer, bombastic track will develop, toying with those ideas and refining them before reaching a final concluding moment that then leads into the next introductory piece. At its core this is a fairly basic formula around which to structure an album; it succeeds here due to the EP format, which not only welcomes but even invites the creation of a work that is more singular and less comprehensive than a full-length.
Although mainly expositional in structure, the music here becomes such through the use of the aforementioned techniques which Abigor had been refining in its early works. There remain instances of the dual guitars switching each others' melodies, but these are far less common than they were on
Verwüstung / Invoke the Dark Age; in fact, where one of the failings of that album was a lack of phrasal development hiding behind the overuse of said technique, here the technique is used in servitude overall phrasal development, most often as a concluding apex to the song. In addition to a few iterations of this tried-and-true technique, a new one eliciting much of the same effect is employed with far more commonality; instead of having the melodies switch voices, they simply exchange volume levels. While on paper this would seem less effective, its simplicity along with the intensity of the music in general leads to a sense of increasing coalescence. Foremost in the polyphonic techniques used, though, is the simplest of all, due to its already having been common in death metal; a main riff will play along a basic musical idea, with the the second guitar matching this riff except in its highest points, which it plays higher, and its lowest points, which it plays lower. Most such moments are concluded by having the melodic lines play in perfect unison, a technique that would normally do nothing but increase harmonics but due to to its use as a climax blurs the line between anticlimactic and striking - which only serves to better lead the way into the next piece.
While polyphyny also remains in the classical music technique of playing two interacting melodies off of each other, it is most often relegated to isolated instances. Longitudinal development is more often achieved by having one guitar often play a very basic repeating riff, sometimes comprised of nothing more than two fairly close chords, while the other will begin a phrase on one of these two chords, playing an internal rising riff within three or four repetitions of the basic riff, before coming back down to meet another repetition of the source chord from which it began. Once again, this is a simpler technique on paper than playing two fully-formed melodies against each other; nevertheless, it ends up being far more effective for this type of music.
Even the drumming has undergone a change towards both the simpler and the better. Whereas the first LP adopted a drum line that would constantly accentuate what the melodies were doing, here it is a much more straightforward affair. Blastbeats are almost incessant, and hyperfast; in fact, the only time they break into fills is at the concluding portions of melodic phrases. Whereas this is an oft-used technique in the genre, here it is justified, giving those conclusions immense weight by the fact they are so rare, deriving power from their sudden and impactive appearance after long periods of battering ambience.
As it stands, this work is a perfect expression of its lyrical content, as well as an astonishing expression of its inherent musical themes strung together into a narrative format that provides an extra dimension to those lyrical themes. What gives this work its extra edge, if anything, is the restraint it displays; while one wonders if this music could have been further developed into a much longer work, as one can certainly feel it straining against the boundaries of what the genre can achieve, this same brevity is one of its strengths. And although it does feel rushed at times, particularly towards the end, that same sense of rushing to a close only amplifies the intensity with which it happens. Ultimately, even its flaws work in this album's favor, and this is what pushes it beyond simply being a highlight of its genre. A work that has yet to have its voice either answered or developed, even by Abigor itself.
