Beats and yelling: Birkental

Peccatum Mortiferum
Out 13^th December on Void Wanderer Productions

Energetic, warm occultist black metal with aspirations toward high melodicism, and subtle yet effective gestures toward epic narrative storytelling. The soft, pillow punching snare combined with a bass guitar lead and a generally strained and dramatic poise will inevitably invite comparisons to Necromantia, Mortuary Drape, or Master’s Hammer. But aside from some aesthetic similarities and clear roots within the older, pre-Norwegian heavy metal influenced forms of black metal, Birkental are oriented more toward the folk or longform epic prose traditions of black metal in an Aeternus with no small degree of traditional doom laced in, further diluting the black metal DNA of this album.

Whilst the production carries the usual retro sheen, it serves the music well by enhancing the atmospheric limitations of the bass, a more percussive instrument when taken against the ambient qualities of a distorted guitar. The punchy melodic code is decorated with light and intermittent keyboard lines, filling in the blanks as far as textural continuity is concerned. Drums are soft yet punchy, the bass again brought to the fore but retaining rhythmic over atmospheric qualities, with reverb kept to a minimum. Choppy blast-beats and frenetic fills are welcome, but the performance is wisely restrained, elevating the aggressive momentum of the music without disrupting the rhythmic flow with anything excessively technical.

Vocals are a mid-range bark somewhere between Impaled Nazarene and early Root. Leveraging the ghoulish qualities of this pitch range alongside a distant hardcore punk lineage enhancing the percussive interaction with the dominant rhythm section.

Given the fact that the music is on paper rhythmically focused, it remains praiseworthy that this is not the lasting impression one is left with from this album. The melodies, whilst simple, are memorable, efficient, and purposeful. There is no excess fat, each riff and link passage serves a purpose in driving the music forward or else creating a moment of dramatic import. Basic speed metal runs offer a backdrop of urgency and aggression, providing an obvious but no less effective contrast with the idiosyncratic lyricism of the lead basslines.

Faltering, stop start beats create tension between moments of release as the music seems to lurch between struggle and resolve. Akin to stumbling through an overgrown wood, battling through the undergrowth and repeatedly falling, only to run freely again through a patch of open terrain.

Whilst Birkental are hardly the first in black metal to experiment with bass guitar as a lead instrument, this is certainly one of the most successful attempts since Necromantia. The music carries enough character, imagination, variety, and energy that one can choose to bypass its oddities in order to appreciate the piece in the round. As an intellectual exercise it is interesting to note the various ways Birkental have overcome the limitations of the bass when set against layers of guitar. The tireless drum work, the sporadic church organ tones, or the time and effort to craft melodic currents that stick in the mind far longer than a good portion of modern metal bands are capable of. ‘Peccatum Mortiferum’ makes for a welcome late entry into the book of 2024, a delight of a black metal oddity.