Beats and yelling: Grand Demise of Civilisation

The Blaze of Abbadon
Out 4^th June on Ordovician Records

This album is archetypical of death metal musicians composing black metal, with all the pros and cons that come with this process. As a rule of thumb, death metal is the more composed form of extreme metal. It relies on dense, ordered, intricate, and at times wildly technical sequences constructed from load bearing riffs, with an armoury of ornamentation and theory standing ready to furnish these structural pillars with jagged facades. It creates the conditions for chaos but is not ruled by it. Even with the most overtly primitive death/doom, the presence of order can be felt as potential. It encourages disorder only to bottle and direct it. For an example of what death metal looks like without these self-imposed constraints, just look to its sister genre grindcore.

Black metal, by contrast, is the art of doing more with less. Whilst atmosphere and texture are key ingredients in this distinction, established wisdom overplays their importance. It is the overreach of black metal that marks it apart from death metal, particularly in regard to the vast ideas and spaces conveyed by the artform given its profoundly limited methodology. This is the locus and magic of the genre at the level of technique, performance, production, and ability. This is also the reason why overly composed, produced, or performed black metal – as a rule of thumb ­– often lacks that essential mysticism, no matter how compelling the music may be on paper. Darkthrone are perhaps the original exception that proved the rule here, being talented musicians deliberately limiting themselves after ‘Soulside Journey’ in order to develop a new, more feral language.

It’s therefore interesting when confronted with an album like ‘The Blaze of Abbadon’. Crafted by accomplished musicians whose experience lies chiefly within death metal, but who clearly understand the underlying motivations of classicist black metal as music of both primal energy and vaulting ambition. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Grand Demise of Civilisation are limiting themselves based on the material here. There is a rigid focus on crafting tight, self-contained, flowing black metal with dark yet sophisticated energy. The affect leaves one a little hollow in the knowledge that this is an environment under the complete control of these musicians, a feeling compensated by the sheer professionalism of the presentation.

We have picked this album out because despite the lurking sense of overly zealous middle management. The knowledge of longform composition alongside a clear aesthetic intent elevates this above 90% of material confronting us in a similar vein, for the simple reason that ‘The Blaze of Abbadon’ is conceptually loose, modest in design despite its rich sonic tapestries, and intuitively understands black metal as the leveraging of disparate elements (techniques, forms, vibes, contrast) into a project of world building. This provides the listener with an entire gallery of forms and shapes ripe for study. The halls may be a little too clean, with a lingering odour of disinfectant, sparse in their presentation and originality, but they are nevertheless extensive and engaging regardless.

The riffs breathe with minimalist gothic tension in a way that echoes A Transylvanian Funeral for their ability to convey more than the sum of their parts. Simple harmonic material serves as development, recontextualising the same throughline before giving way to a flurry of chromatic activity. Choppy accents bookend certain riffs in a way reminiscent of later Emperor, here used as a way to juxtapose ambiguity and disorder against the linear gallop of central themes.

Drums maintain the momentum well without ever becoming a distraction. One could listen to the entire album without ever consciously addressing the drums, but feel their effects regardless. This again speaks to the orientation of this album as a studied review of black metal as the art of composition. The drums offer no surplus fills, no needlessly convoluted patterns. Just a steady, driving pace with fluid transitions between tempo and emphasis. Crafted specifically to suit the needs of the music that surrounds it.

Despite the overtly traditional vocals, guitar tone, and overall tonal palette, brief interludes and accents hint at what could be called progressive metal (that Emperor connection emerging again). But these in turn are kept restrained, held back against the primary need to treat black metal as a focused artform, undistracted by the temptations of musical ephemera that seems to have captured large chunks of ostensibly forward thinking extreme metal in the current landscape.    

‘The Blaze of Abbadon’ is far from perfect. As mentioned, the execution is sometimes too efficient for its own good. Grand Demise of Civilisation are clinical operators, acutely aware of the precise array and measure of ingredients required for modestly melodic, symphonic black metal. Whilst greater satisfaction can therefore be taken in witnessing how expertly these pieces unfurl in lurches of intuitively dark energy to unexpectedly ambiguous transitions, one can’t help but notice the sterility of the experience. In such a controlled environment, the outcomes, however satisfying, are limited. But even with that in mind, the album offers up an array of talking points and curiosities that put much of contemporary landscape to shame. And Grand Demise of Civilisation deserve praise for the pains they have taken to offer a clear, concise vision, uncluttered by worthless textural ephemera and overworked conceptual framing devices. This is music chiefly driven by compositions, ideas, musical relationships and developments over an embarrassment of vibes with no underlying motivation.