Beats and yelling: Shadow Legion and reopening the dark metal files

Shadow Legion
Out 9^th August, self-released

The arrival of Shadow Legion’s self-titled debut has prompted some to once again dig through the files on dark metal’s patchy legacy. Despite the tag’s frugal elegance when taken against the clunkier but much more commonly used “death/black metal”, “dark metal” has failed to gain any traction with the listening public. There are a number of reasons for this. Despite a scattering of bands picking up the moniker over the decades since Bethlehem (see Lonegoat’s review of Shadow Legion for the potted history), there are no clear characteristics common to dark metal bands that would set them apart from hundreds of others never associated with the label. What links Aaternus, Bethlehem, and more recently Mefitis and Serpent Ascending beyond a vague association with a distinctive selling point few other artists seem willing to take up?

The source of all this obfuscation is clear, dark metal is a vibe, not a genre. These bands are linked philosophically, not compositionally. Dark metal is hardly the first or the worst example of a vibe masquerading as a genre. Over the years many a journalist has been responsible for the proliferation of labels entirely lacking in meaning beyond marketing scams (pirate metal anyone?), but language these projects only succeed if the language holds enough efficacy to be taken up by a significant audience. Even in an age of viral trends, terminology lacking explanatory power cannot be contrived into existence.

Further, all metal, to some extent, is dark. Even power metal at its brightest cloaks a barbaric euphoria deployed to drown out any doubt or misgiving, made dark by the gravity of implication behind the unsaid surrounding the text itself. What makes dark metal uniquely dark against archetypical black metal, funeral doom, or gothic metal? This lack of efficaciousness has condemned dark metal to the peripheries of music chat, never fully cementing in the articles and chat threads of metal discourse despite its enduring, holy-grail-of-labels allure.

And so we come to Shadow Legion’s debut. Featuring the guitar work of Brian Malone previously of the decidedly death metal outfit Diabolic, this considerable debut does not deprive itself of the space with which to descant on a breadth of metal traditions, bound together by an aesthetic one could describe as drab more than dark. The actual package of riffs falls into that black/death category that, as a descriptor, many despise, but so clearly encapsulates the entity greeting us here. The violent power of death metal, its lurking menace, gravitas, and technical depth are bound together with an ethereal, mystical fluidity via the rich melodic flourishes of tremolo picked riffs, washing away the nihilistic doubt engendered by death metal with the certainty of heroism. Malone’s abstract lead guitar work is deployed sparingly but effectively, lending the human centric domesticity of the tonally grounded riffs and cleanly crooned vocals the much needed combativeness of a surrealist framing. 

But this push and pull of distinctive genre’s competing for metaphorical import is merely a vessel for a much broader drama. A lyrical backbone of bouncy folk metal runs through ‘Shadow Legion’, augmented by restrained Viking metal expressed through epic heavy metal melodicism. Think Týr sans hokey drollery. Aspects of folk metal jaunt form a macro level motivation, with the flourishes of extreme metal – both melodic and atonal – providing mere commentary and sometimes antagonism to this surprisingly literal yet no less engaging iteration of cinematic metal.

I’ve doubts about the dark metal label as it applies here, beyond its obvious brevity when compared to “black/death/Viking metal with heavy metal influences”. But tags are ultimately explanatory tools not poetic devices, and sadly the latter descriptor helps the would be listener locate Shadow Legion far more precisely than “dark metal”. Heavy metal’s brightness is certainly made darker by the gravity of extreme metal riffing, bolstered by a drab delivery and a mix as rich as it is deep. But there is nothing uniquely dark about ‘Shadow Legion’ when taken against the wider landscape of contemporary metal making use of a similar blend of black, death, and heavy metal, prompting my refusal to hang my hat on this term beyond a broad desire to de-clunk terminology.

The experience gap between the “cleaner” genres of metal – traditional heavy metal, epic doom, power metal, speed metal etc. – and extreme, darker variants is larger than we usually acknowledge. Whilst it’s common to be a fan of both, the concoction of traditional key signatures, anthemic vocal styles, clear melodic hooks, and (for the most part) common time signatures of the former is worlds away from the labyrinthine sojourns of death metal, the frigid noise blasts of black metal, or the glacial unfurling darkness of funeral doom.

Despite the proliferation of artists over the years attempting to bridge the gap, anyone looking to craft a synthesis risks alienating two audiences with one stone instead of nurturing cross appeal stardom. Shadow Legion’s approach to this is oddly fragmented. Tracks and passages fall into a clear binary, little is done to integrate the traditional heavy metal lineage with that of black and death metal. But somehow it succeeds precisely on that basis. Shadow Legion remain adept at both styles, imaginative and technically admirable musicians who work up this anomic offering with nuance, complexity, and diversity. The result is more comprehensive piece of sonic cinema than it is atomised or unfocused tangentcore.