Review Summary: paganus mysterium tremendum et fascinans
To get right to the point,
Confusion Gate is in my mind the strongest album that New York’s
Yellow Eyes have written to date. Content to mine their cacophonous sound deeper rather than cast wide their musical nets, Yellow Eyes have (largely) stubbornly driven their spades again and again into the fertile loam of blackened melody and dissonance, heralded each time by discordant chimes. But instead of building their own ossuary, the band has instead chiseled out an impressively disorienting album built on raw emotion.
Listening to
Confusion Gate isn’t so different from wandering into a folk horror masterpiece. This album is filled with hauntingly ethereal synths, eerily mechanical bird chirps and cryptic, unsettling lyrics. I find that the calm passages here are almost more unnerving than the monstrous walls of black metal riffs.
Confusion Gate also serves as the follow up to 2023’s
Master’s Murmur which saw the band push out an impressive scattershot album filled with ambience, texture and melody. Those themes are incorporated expertly into
Confusion Gate, inextricably tying the two works together.
The neatest trick that Yellow Eyes have long held in their gibecière, however, is the ability to hold the listener’s attention despite creating intensely hypnotic albums. I’ll find myself zoning out at various times listening to
Confusion Gate, only to be sucked back in by a smart switch to acoustic instrumentation and muffled whispering, or a subtle shift from dissonant tremolo picking that resolves back into the main melody. Nothing on this album feels solid, like wandering into a muddy forest at twilight as the inescapable gravity of distant ceremonial howls and chants summons you inwards. In an incessantly flowing way it effortlessly conjures a numinous beauty.
With such a monolithic album it’s hard to pick out the individual elements, as on their own they really do fail to capture a sense of the whole. Even still, it’s impossible not to mention the musical acrobatics on display here. The songwriting and guitarwork are focused squarely on atmosphere while skillfully painting otherworldly soundscapes. The drums sound organic and battering. The vocals, tortuous and harrowing. An assortment of understated synths, chimes and folk instruments provide bursts of color and disquietude.
Confusion Gate is a truly cohesive, enigmatic and enrapturing work of art. With it, Yellow Eyes managed to create one of 2025’s best albums, black metal or not. If you haven’t heard this one yet, do yourself a favor and give it a listen. If you have, it’s time for another spin.
