Review Summary: Black Metal is Exhausting
Black Metal is Perseverance. Despite the buzzing wall of noise–seemingly coming from all directions–a melody and hook still manage to focus your attention. There is also a profound weight to the music that is almost anxiety-inducing. If you have ever experienced a panic attack, then you know exactly what I am talking about. Everyone experiences panic attacks differently, but a common theme is a heavy feeling on your chest and extreme difficulty breathing. During this time you're hyperventilating and the lack of oxygen going to your brain creates this auditory fog where everything is loud–– yet, ENTIRELY unintelligible.
The reason why I said Black Metal is almost anxiety-inducing is that the music encapsulates that feeling perfectly. However, you're entering those murky swamps of your own accord, and that makes all the difference in the world. Besides, Isn't therapy all about confronting the dark corners of your mind? Well, if you're going to tread those foreboding waters you might as well do it with some bloody riffs and a couple extra hundred dollars.
Black Metal is Cathartic. While you're going through the panic, while the walls seem to be closing in around you, a piece of you knows that this too shall pass. You take a deep breath and focus on the sensation of the air as it descends your windpipe and fills your stomach. You exhale and watch your stomach shrink as it pushes out the air you just forced in. The anxiety is still present––it is a persistent leech––but it is no longer the loudest thing in the room. You have focused your attention on the sensation of the breath and that is where you will remain.
With Black Metal, you focus your attention on the melody that is fighting its way through Hell's relentless cacophony. A sliver of reason to the madness. A flicker of light in the darkest room. That is the beauty in black metal. You may have to work to find it, but once you have grabbed a hold of it you get to truly admire the juxtaposition this music presents.
The beauty that radiates despite the beast that surrounds it.
Black Metal is Exhausting. Phantasmagorie is the track responsible for cracking the seventh seal. There is a tremolo riff surrounded by nearly inaudible howls while a beautiful acoustic guitar lightly plays above the hellish landscape below it. Before you know it, the drums come pounding in. At times, it sounds as if three distinct melodies are playing at once, yet the closer you listen, the more you realize how succinctly compact these sounds are constructed.
Your heart is racing, you cant catch your breath, you're sweating bullets but feel cold to the touch. Distinct symptoms all following the franticly waving hand of its conductor: Your treacherous mind.
Black Metal is Haunting. Strepitus Mundi, the fifth track, is sinister. The album is close to its end yet, the energy has picked up considerably. Your heart rate has gone so high that your stomach begins turning over in protest. The nausea is thick enough to make your head spin and the person who is pleading with you to calm down sounds like a memory shouting from a great distance. Back to the breathing. Focusing on the sensation of the breath isn't enough so you begin to count the inhales and exhales.
Four seconds on the inhale, hold for two and exhale for three.
With your mind preoccupied with the numbers and sensations of the breath, the noise of panic begins to dwindle. You stop hearing the pulse in your ears. Strepitus Mundi is one of the fastest and hardest-hitting tracks on the album, but it has some of the most jaw-dropping melodies. It may be abrasive, but its beauty is never consumed by its ferocity. Although the music has grown in intensity, the welcoming glow of masterful instrumentation is there to keep you grounded.
A juxtaposition is a powerful tool when it comes to appreciating the things we often take for granted. We only miss the girl when she's gone and our health when it's on death's door. But if we could place the desirable next to the undesirable, merely as a thought experiment, then we would live better lives. The good, the beautiful, and the inspiring would all be enhanced by their antithesis. Black Metal is that thought experiment put to sound and it is done wonderfully on this record. Black Metal is both the panic and the peaceful aftermath all in one place.
