Hiemis: Malleus Maleficarum
Out 21st December on Noctivagant
Theologically preoccupied evanescent dark ambient sees the cavernous stasis of the genre lifted into a place of understated hope. Low, swelling synth patches create space for modestly deployed samples to furnish the music with links to its conceptual subject matter. Atop this sparse underbelly, gradual evolutions toward a place of light unfurl in longform over the course of the album. Subtle choral textures and flirtations with major key harmonics tease out the impression of activity from the deep well of frozen contemplation. Manipulated string tones make up the bulk of the timbral offering, with hints of cello or larger string sections worked through a churn of artificiality, the post industrial technology of dark ambient butts up against its medieval subject matter in a tense exchange of information beneath the surface level placidity. This interchange is framed and ultimately governed by a novel use of ambiguity, as the discourse on tonal centres gives way to pure noise, only to return from the brink in order to accommodate a resolution of sorts. This creates direction, motion, and activity, and is ultimately why this album leaves a more lasting impression than the majority of dark ambient, and indeed warrants more intense study than a piece of mere “mood music”.
SAD: Black Metal Craft
Out 23rd December on Purity Through Fire
When someone brings up a film I haven’t seen in a conversation it always invokes a grim resignation. A) because I have no interest in film, and B) because what follows is usually an unsolicited and achingly detailed summation of the plot, told with all the intonation of the Speaking Clock. Greece’s SAD offer the equivalent experience via a black metal album. Never ones to shy away from an ill chosen and unnecessarily descriptive naming conventions, they announce the raw materials of black metal, but the craft is nowhere to be seen. The result is a dispassionate list of black metal tropes devoid of artistry. The backbone follows a diluted facsimile of early to mid-era Gorgoroth sans the raw fury. For the most part this album meanders around a series of forgettable black metal compositional mores as if in need of something more worthwhile to occupy itself with. This frustratingly linear approach, SADly a hallmark of much meat ‘n’ potatoes black metal these days, does meet with tangential material. But there is little to connect these signs of promise with the central compositional thread, thus obscuring motivation or purpose. Worse still, any momentum or tension accumulated across these divergent passages is usually squandered, simply jettisoned before bringing it to fruition in order to return to an endless rerun of generic black metal ephemera. Curiosities abound, from well placed harmonies to wonderful detours. But SAD apply all the creativity and care of someone dispassionately listing off a series of ingredients.
Krvna: The Rhythmus of Death Eternal
Out 10th January on Zazen Sounds
Australia’s Krvna trade in their symphonic vampirism for a love letter to epic heavy metal retold through the language of black metal. Symphonic in the sense that multiple guitar tracks of sweeping tremolo riffing shift the melodic focus away from a series of clearly defined refrains toward a macro view of dense textural motion. This distinctive orchestral calling card of Krvna’s style is retained for this EP, with melodic intent ill defined by design, it creates a canvas onto which fragmented guitar lines are afforded a simplicity in execution and delivery owing to their placement within predetermined dramatic stakes. Where Krvna do diverge from their previous material is precisely here, a greater emphasis on lead guitar work, whether via more complex melodies or traditional soloing, pivoting the music toward epic heavy metal. This influence always sat as an undercurrent for Krvna, but here the connection is made explicit, not least through their choice to cover Bathory’s ‘Man of Iron’, giving the raw folk naivety of the original a cinematic lick of paint. A cover of Abigor’s ‘As Astral Images Darken Reality’ gives voice to the other end of Krvna’s interest in black metal. The weaponisation of melodicism into a frantic, almost overwhelmingly dense package of information imposing itself on the listener, carving monoliths out of the sheer will of surplus activity.
Sovereign: Altered Realities
Out 19th January on Dark Descent Records
The circle surrounding Sovereign, Nekromenatheon, and Execration are trying valiantly to conjure a quiet (and slow) renaissance of Norwegian death metal over the last decade. A measured yet neighbourly rebuttal to the annoying faux intellectualism of the regrettable Morbus Chron episode across the border in Sweden. Progressive but homely, technical in construction yet organic in delivery, but maybe just a little too preoccupied with creating disorientating, abstract surrealism at the expense of tight composition. Sovereign’s debut feels like yet another redraft of this formula, pivoting the conceptual material toward sci-fi themes in a move that is perhaps a little late to the party by 2024. Glimmers of intrigue abound, as do novel approaches to contriving tension and release. But for lengthy passages Sovereign sound like a band playing for time, leaning on detritus from death metal in the immediate aftermath of Slayer or else overly technical tangents by way of filler material, until they are able to work themselves around to a weightier theme or moment of novelty. Early progressive death metal stylings get a fair hearing, as does the more direct face of the Floridian sound as was. But Sovereign seem too preoccupied with aligning themselves with late thrash in the form of progressive redundancies such as Watchtower to truly articulate the vision promised by the packaging of ‘Altered Realities’. This invokes a frustrated affection. The album looks and behaves like oddball death metal worthy of study, but it constantly throws up barriers and flawed logic as if to thwart our advances.
Necrotum: Defleshed Exhumation
Out 22nd January on Memento Mori
I suppose there’s no harm in simply throwing every element of death metal you find appealing into a blender and regurgitating the resulting mush into a mid-paced groove of near random affectations. Romania’s Necrotum offer a near relentless cavalcade of information, some of it even making a pretence to some purpose. But at the macro level there seems to be little interest in working these ideas through to a conclusion, or even development. That being said, there is innovation beneath the obfuscation. Their stance on brutal or technical stylings bypasses much of the recent history of this subgenre, instead adopting a call-and-response approach to lead ornamentation, with each shredding interval positioning itself as antagonist and disruptor toward the rhythm section. The trouble being that Necrotum seem unsure of how to leverage this underutilised (but let’s face it, garden variety) technique within death metal circles. As a result the riff language remains sadly underdeveloped. Despite the sheer quantity of information unleashed across this album, extended passages see no identity or motivation besides a constantly reshuffled proto slam lurchcore. The destructive intent of the lead guitar makes for a curious listen, but the sad fact of ‘Defleshed Exhumation’ is that Necrotum seem incapable of taking this idea beyond mere suggestion.
Stuporous: Asylum’s Lament
Out 25t January on Void Wander Productions/War Productions
This album suffers from the same problem that the vast majority of inward orientated metal does, a lack of gestalt capable of transcending the immediate circumstances of the music’s construction and release. I’m sure it has value as a means of personal therapy and short term catharsis, but it has little to say beyond this limited silo. The vocabulary of blackened doom metal is repurposed into incoherence as the idiosyncrasies of a personal mental anguish find articulation in a medium ill suited to such expressions. To put it another way, it fails for the same reason that the majority of DSBM fails: naturalism – as one of black metal’s greatest artistic strengths – is substituted for rank individualism. The result warps the form into a domesticated vulgarity whilst simultaneously failing to give voice to whatever psychological torment the artist is attempting to convey. The jazz ornamentation that introduces the album is quickly snuffed out as ‘Throne of Madness’ kicks in with contrived angst. But ironically, this is one of the few instances (in an extreme metal setting) where the jazz impulses of the musicians should maybe have been indulged to a far greater degree, allowing the blackened doom elements to pose as mere flavourings as opposed to helmsmen. But as things stand, Stuporous have planted their flag firmly in metallic territory, with jazz abstractions jettisoned in favour of cheap post rock emotivism. Vocals complete the buffet of utter tedium, with black metal stylings mixed with hammy theatrics, tender clean passages, and a revolving cast of characters from the creche of over therapized modern metal.
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