Review Summary: Whatever happens under the hood, stays under the hood.
Greek deity Thetis didn't put much thought that time she grabbed her son Achilles from one heel and submerged him in the Styx river, so he would become invulnerable, as not much thought went into the German black metal squad Groza when they chose to name the band after Polish stalwarts Mgla's 2008 debut album.
In doing so, Achilles’s heel would become his weak point, the only part of his body that the miraculous waters of the Styx couldn’t touch, as Paris would discover when his arrow pierced the warrior’s talon. The case applies here for Groza, the reason being that the band's main influence also became their weakest point, for every bit of praise their first album,
Unified in Void, got when it was released in 2018, it also became the bullseye of Mgla’s avengers and black metal
pvrists with nothing else to do but to wave the flag of judgmental justice in the name of genre preservation around the vast and empty virtual fields of the internet, looking for a battle that was never going to happen, as Groza would never show up to deny it in the first place.
The Germans have never pretended they weren’t enjoying the spell they were under, nor have the other thousand black metal acts spawning from the likes of Darkthrone or Mayhem have ever tried to do so either. They dress like Mgla, they sound like Mgla and they rip, indeed, like Mgla, and that might be completely fine by people like me, who also like, you know... Mgla. Hell, they are all even wearing a black sack on their heads, so how can anyone say for certain they are not all the same people?!
Anyway, foolish theories aside, Groza have another album, fresh from the grottos!
The Redemptive End is the band's sophomore album, released through German label AOP Records, and it's a giant step forward from the narrower field of work of their debut. This second release sees Groza breaking through their main influence and delving into quiet and lengthy post rock passages like the introductory section of "Sunken in Styx - Pt-I Submersion" or the second half of that immense title track, as well as burning through some blackened death'n'roll ala Tribulation in several parts of the album, with that sick middle riff of closer "Homewards" being probably my favorite moment of the entire recording.
It is unavoidable to hear some Uada too on the vocal work of whoever is under the hood, with registers varying from guttural growls to heart shredding screams, which adds enough spice to the mix to keep the flames lit throughout the forty minutes of
The Redemptive End. With the exception of the first two tracks (which being labeled as part I and II it's fair to consider them as one solid track), Groza don't seem to care to expand on different tangents within the songs, blasting beats, firing up trems up and down, left and right and leading to elaborated progressions that are rapturously captivating, with the third track "Elegance of Irony" or heavy weight "Nil" being good examples of what the band is capable of.
All in all,
The Redemptive End packs enough brilliance to make the album worth the coin you would need to pay Caronte anyway to take your dead soul to the other side of the void, but it’s also true that, at times, one can't help to feel this release is one more scratch on a very jaded wall that's been eroded by an unfathomable number of bands throughout the years with only slightly different offerings to distinguish them. Fans of label mates Harakiri For The Sky will definitely enjoy what the Germans have created on this second album, a nihilistic brand of black metal that dares to deviate from the path in several occasions, reaching out for unexplored territory instead of playing it safe with the orthodox methods at hand, and it's in those moments where Groza and
The Redemptive End become an augur of what lies beyond for them.
