Review Summary: Practically featureless, yet commonly enjoyable BM.
Generally speaking, there’s a point to black metal tracks. They flow with certain ambiances, creating captivating soundscapes and conjuring pictures. I can’t usually say the same about this album, which features endlessly repeated guitar melodies and hit drums that pummel instead of focusing on fantasy creations. The harsh vocalist sounding like a goblin on the mic aside, what we have here is very basic black metal, with little extra features of note. The drum portions are predictable, and indeed, there’s not too many surprises in this release. The standout feature here must be the very prickly, grisly vocal sound creating a sharp force impossible to escape from.
Riffs and a lot of aggression are housed, catering towards a full sound: a waterfall of guitar noise. In certain albums this may create a beautiful sound, or a sharp dagger. In this case, the atmosphere is too often left as a dense enough fog, and is like a lot of clutter. It’s not the production doing this, but rather the lack of standout hooks. The feeling of the album is that I had already heard that song before, when in fact, it was a fresh, separate song.
Repetition creates very steady grooves here. The drum acts as though a drum machine, and the guitars on top are in perfect harmoniousness. It’s clearly a talented band, and yet a large piece is missing from this album. Some of the more interesting sections are the quieter moments with more spacey guitar bits, because that’s where the music changes a little bit and allows room for creativity. Outside of that, we’re left with a very 1-2-3 black metal release. It’s engaging enough, and should please for a time, but there are much more memorable albums out there.
Even a few extra solos, or something extra could’ve escalated my interest in relistening to this release. Instead, I’m left wondering if it’s worth it to explore this band’s discography when there are so many great black metal bands. Time is precious. As soon as I had finishing listening to this, a song from Azaghal started playing on Spotify, and I could hardly tell I was listening to a different band. I’m not sure if that’s a critique on black metal itself, or just this album, but it was worth noting.
