Review Summary: Music to disappear to.
Black metal is probably the most divisive subgenre of metal. Both in terms of the disparate reactions listeners have to its extremes and in the wildly divergent paths the sound has taken in recent times. Though there are certainly gradations along the way, black metal has largely split into the "trve" and the "post" varieties in terms of notoriety. On one side are bands that stick to the sound's roots, making it inaccessible and unfriendly. They might add some death influences, ambience, or folk, but it's still black metal in the vein of old Darkthrone and Mayhem. Then you have the "post" crowd, the Deafheavens and Russian Circles of the world, applying post rock and shoegaze songcraft with lusher production to the ice of black metal. These two groups don't really get along, and are a perpetual source of infighting about what is and isn't black metal.
So where does Vials of Wrath fit in with all that nonsense? Well...
From the opening moments of Seeking Refuge, it's obvious that Vials of Wrath aren't aiming at replicating the lo-fi "necro" sound that many black metal purists adore and everyone else thinks sounds like music coming out of an answering machine. This is grander black metal, with meaty drums, clear strings, and vocals that, for all their rasp and shriek, don't just blend in with the rest.
Opener "A Greater Calling" sets the stage nicely, although it's a bit cliche. Stop me if you've heard this before: Ambient wind and faint rain sounds, clean guitars that slowly build until the tremolo riff, double kick drums, and harsh vocals burst forth. Yeah, nothing new here, but it's exquisitely done. The riff is "catchy", for lack of a better term, and it shifts and morphs as the song progresses without overstaying its welcome. There's an odd serenity to it all, as opposed to a band trying to scare you with corpse paint and blood. Black metal for the loner, not the hateful. It's a definite case of letting the listener know, within a few minutes, whether or not they'll enjoy the rest of the album.
That isn't to say Seeking Refuge is repetitive, but rather that its sound is consistent. Each song certainly has its own flavor, but much like Monty Python sketches, you're either going to like the formula or you're not. Seeking Refuge has six tracks, two of them being gentle interludes, and of the four remainders, three of them do the ambient/clean/swell/explode pattern. It's no less effective each time, but if you prefer your black metal to fly out the gate at full speed you're going to be left disappointed. Additionally, there are myriad slow sections, and more "rocking" riffs pop up periodically. Don't get this confused to mean this is in any way "black n roll", but rather that Vials of Wrath does not limit itself to pure tremolo chromatics. The bands at the start of the movement didn't either, a fact many of the later crop of "trve" bands have forgotten.
At the same time, anyone expecting "blackgaze" will be sorely left wanting. These are not soundtrack wanderings or emotional soul searching translated through the scope of black metal. There are no surprising elements thrown in, no odd instruments or unusual compositional choices. To return to the earlier rumination on black metal's opposing movements, Vials of Wrath is a "trve" black metal album produced like a "post" album. There are a few tiny touches of keyboards or synth strings here and there, but they're never doing anything but adding texture to the minor key melodies and furious guitar picking. The drumming is powerful and frenetic, but you're not finding jazz patterns and tribal tom work on Seeking Refuge. Is there a bass guitar? Sure, but it keeps itself subtle, providing a rather typically "metal" role of giving the rest of the music a thick foundation to build upon as opposed to distinct melodies of its own.
Track 6, "Alone in the Wilderness", closes the album in a nicely symmetrical fashion by opening up with bombastic black metal and fading to a clean riff before closing with, as per the title, sounds of wilderness fading out. It's nice when a band lets you know exactly what's coming up. It works rather well and leaves the listener feeling as though the album itself were part of a journey through the cold forest as opposed to sitting in front of a band playing music. That actually encapsulates the feeling well. This is haunting black metal, the echoes of solitude rather than the chilly hate of misanthropy. If you're in the mood for that, you're not gonna find much better in recent times than Seeking Refuge.
