Review Summary: Who will wipe this blood off us?
To bare the weight of death is to come to terms with our mortality; it is to stare into the abyss and surrender to its encompassing arms. What is the significance of a lifetime when placed on the scales of eternity? Wrestling with the incomprehensible will leave you pinned, grasping at straws, pleading for an answer. But silence is god here. The void and its secrets are too grand for the minds of those who are nothing more than a droplet in the sea of the dead.
We are creatures of reason. A question must have an answer, no matter the cost. Our ancestors filled the gap with the concept of god. After all, monolithic questions require equally vast gap fillers. And so, through the minds of the damned god was conceived, and through the minds of the skeptic, god is unceremoniously murdered. Nietzsche wrote it best, "Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?" Consequently, the void returns. Whether the sentence fits the crime is irrelevant. This is our contract price.
Andracca is a UK black metal band from Lancashire, England, and that is the extent of my knowledge regarding their identity and origin. Do they venture untrodden paths? No, but they are navigating the ultimate frontier, and that will always serve as a source of endless fascination to those who are willing to explore the unknown. The first track of the album is the title track, To Bare the Weight of Death, and it is profoundly unsettling. The opening riff is slow and haunting. The vocalist's screams of defiance are compelling and controlled. As the track progresses, the influence of Mgła, particularly in their Exercises in Futility record, is immediately apparent. The drummer's use of cymbals is much more controlled than the aforementioned record, but it is still used liberally. The atmosphere is what you expect it to be—bleak and unforgiving. Nevertheless, it somehow never descends into full-blown nihilism. This can likely be attributed to the guitarist's irresistible penchant for harmonies that invoke a sense of hope in this bleak wasteland that the rest of the band has created. Ironically, this sense of hope is most palpable in the fourth track, Antithesis of Hope, which sports a gorgeous guitar solo before the rise of another blistering onslaught of blast beats.
The album closer, Hollow Altars, opens with an infectious riff and carries that momentum throughout. To Bare the Weight of Death is an emotional title for an album, and Andracca expertly conveys these emotions for the entire 38-minute run time. I wasn't expecting to have an album of this caliber this early in the year. Andracca are masters of mid-tempo black metal and have managed to wear their influences on their sleeves while still confidently asserting their own identity.If you want more solos in your black metal, but you don’t want to forfeit that zealous aggression, this is the record for you.
