Tideless: Eye of Water
Out 15th September on Chaos Records
For all my love of black metal, there’s no denying the many negatives it brought to metal’s evolution. One of which was creating an avenue for cross pollinating with shoegaze, a genre that exists in stark contrast to metal, being largely concerned with the manipulation of guitar tone, texture, and the articulation of fragility via decidedly un-fragile delivery mechanisms. Despite the obvious commonalities with black metal, genre melding is not synonymous with creative originality. And this regrettable accord has convinced a large crop of metal bands to rework loved forms into the most boring, stagnant, inert and impotent versions of themselves. Thus it is with ‘Eye of Water’, an achingly tedious slog through watered down death doom via a much championed shoegaze influence. The result is cadential forms more linear than the EastEnders theme, repeated ad infinitum with eye wateringly little activity populating this vast landscape. Even explicitly minimalist music requires a form of motivating tension, stakes, or drama. Metal’s marriage to indie forms such as post rock and shoegaze – scant few exceptions aside – is founded on a misconception of how these genres function. Minimalism and sparsity do not mean lack of activity or artistic intent. But when melded with metal forms, that’s precisely what we get, hence the ongoing obsession with shoegaze and post rock being largely responsible for the dumbing down and enshitification of metal from the mid-2000s onwards. Acts like Tideless are living proof that this process continues apace, with another soggy paste of joyless content creaking under the weight of its lack of purpose.
Blood Oath: Lost in an Eternal Silence
Out 15th September on Caligari Records
I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a hundred times, study Chilean metal. Blood Oath – along with the likes of Mortify, Sepulcrum, Letalis, and Demoniac – represent the vanguard of metal in their respective fields. This debut album mirrors Mortify’s in its desire to make death metal weird again. A weirdness born of an effortlessly undulating, disconcerting naturalism. It gets under the skin and crawls within the psyche as opposed to beating the listener over the head with empty novelty. A subdued, lackadaisical energy pervades the album, coating all in eerie dread that embeds a dignified swagger into the latent aggression and energy. This is death metal that works within its compositional norms to cast new messages, shapes, and ideas into the super ego of the genre, demonstrating an engagement with the form keen to reach for a level of sophistication that is sadly rare within the current landscape. Despite the onslaught of organised riff geometry, the overall sheen and delivery is drab, coating even the most frantic moments in a glum refinement fitting of the nuanced balance of compositional architecture at work here. Chile offers yet more promise that death metal is still capable of showing signs of the life and energy it was once known for.
Carathis: The Haunting of Sablewood
Out 15th September on Personal Records
Pointless pop rock appropriating black metal as a delivery mechanism. Blast-beats, raw production, rasping vocals still clear enough to allow the infantile lyrics to be heard, none of this disguises the disposable product regurgitated on this EP. Twinkly keyboards, trivial melodic flourishes delivered as circular adornments with no indication of narrative motivation, banal chord progressions rarely found in even the most generic contemporary pop music. At least bigger budget Disney black metal acts have the guts to lean into their ethos, committing to a glossy production and sense of theatre rather than trying retain any sense of DIY legitimacy. One gets the sense that Carathis wants a seat at the table far as the ongoing dialog on black metal’s future is concerned. But the truth is there is no attempt to engage with the terms of the debate, let alone a clear position advanced.
Acausal Intrusion: Panpsychism
Out 22nd September on I, Voidhanger
Another dose of disorientated death metal drops from this prolific duo, racking up in the region of fifty plus projects between them. Acausal Intrusion is one of the more meditative iterations emerging from their creative minds, pivoting on three dimensional, dissonance driven death metal complexities, embodying the drab, overwhelming atmospheric intent of the contemporary genre, albeit with more clarity and focus than many of their peers. Despite the density of each bar, the mix is clear enough, and the distortion and reverb restrained enough, to allow the listener a clear view into the philosophical mechanics at play behind the amalgamation of riffs. Equally, Acausal Intrusion are not dissonant addicts. They weave in subtly idiosyncratic melodic intentions that emerge incrementally from an otherwise alienating tonal landscape. This provides focal points that motivate the surrounding nihilism, giving it shape and form beyond mere barrages of abrasion. Demilichian tentaclecore serves as the other chief thread linking these tracks together, undulating in bursts of monstrous speed, with illogical chromatic micro-licks accumulating information over the course of a track as complexity supervenes on outrageous simplicity. A work that convincingly marries old school technique with new school aesthetic intent.
Solus Grief: What if this was Everything
Out 22nd September on Purity Through Fire
I suppose if you wanted to listen to impotent stadium rock via the medium of blandist black metal you could do worse than giving ‘What if this was Everything’ a spin. But anyone desirous of such an experience should probably be excluded from opinion having. Solus Grief seem to think they’re playing a form of amped up DSBM, plodding tempos, traditionally rock shaped chord sequences, embarrassing, histrionic vocalisations and all. But they have leveraged empty post rock euphoria via overworked builds into unearned finales in an attempt to look more energetic than your standard depressive affair. Solus Grief use repetition not as a form of meditative, mental suppression, but more as a motivation for action. A call for the listener to engage in the business of “now”. This is the language of power pop, black metal reimagined as a form fist pumping can-do stadium rock disguised as something more sophisticated. The raw or lo-fi ethos is engaged with at a purely cosmetic level, a sheen adorning a journey that fails to venture beyond the domestic.
Solipnosis: Sintesis Silenciosa
Out 23rd September on Virupi
Turns the weapons of blackened thrash into a commentary on directionless but frantic activity. This EP embodies the familiar raw punk energy of the genre, along with the outrageous aggression of the South American variant, but clues, signs, and sometimes outright exclamations subvert the norms of genre type by dragging the music up comically illogical tangents. The result is an uncanny rendering of an at times domesticated genre recast as a surrealist dream, the familiar warped into an uncanny, carnival bizarre of wonderful nonsense. Solipnosis – whether intentionally or no – weaponize absurdist humour to render what is almost a parody of metal. But a parody at the compositional level, using quotations, inversions, and imaginatively deployed non-metal ephemera to bring new perspectives to underground extreme metal as a compositional form. This uses comedy as a means to interrogate established truths. All the elements of frantic blackened thrash are in place, but the phrasing, pacing, and emphasis are all just a little off, an experience that will unsettle any listener versed in the norms being subverted here. And the subtle addition of a unique melodic vocabulary and jazz informed interludes only serves to solidify this EP as a project intent on utterly disorientating metal’s foundations from a constructive, well informed, and ultimately loving place.
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