Beats and yelling: Fryktelig Støy

Incandescent
Out 12^th April on I, Voidhanger Records

The second album from this Australian solo entity sees them move out of the downbeat gloom of blackened doom to bring a more thoroughly black metal expression to the foreground. Irredeemable darkness remains the raison d’etre, but the music is more active, busy, purposeful. Something articulated through riff density, variation, and meandering melodic intention as much as it is speed. The jagged, oppressive darkness of Weigedood meets a more informal, noise rock impetus articulated through hesitant, almost ambient link sequences of ambiguous direction.

Despite the dark fog of noise immediately impressing itself on the listener, the production is warm. Soft, almost tender drums rumble their way through the backdrop of the mix, offering loose, linear blast-beat runs or tense, stop/start motifs, challenging the instruments to retain coherence. Layers of guitars fill out the bulk of this album, exercised through a tone both hazy and mellow yet capable of doing justice to the razor sharpness of the tremolo picked riffs. A strong bass tone completes this album’s strong orientation toward doom metal, offering throbbing accents and rhythmic muscle to the slower passages whilst going toe to toe with the guitar as the momentum builds. Em Støy’s vicious vocals complete the picture, once again veering somewhere between performance art in their rhythmic and cadential ambiguity and the consistency of a low black metal growl, solidifying certain passages out of their anomie to great effect.

Fryktelig Støy’s approach remains curious for its ability to offer coherent narrative threads in the metal sense of the term. Each track pivots on a clear theme, many riffs bolster this communication and work through an intentional exchange of material as tracks build momentum and energy. Yet there is an overarching consciousness that seems intent on splitting these pieces apart into tentative, loose, informal experiments in tone, phrasing, and drama. Here it bears comparison – positively – to noise rock, ambient, and indeed, similar attempts to make more of avant-garde black metal than mere subversion of expectation (such as A Forest of Stars or the Icelandic dissonance of Svartidauði or Carpe Noctem). One could also look to Mayhem’s ‘Ordo ad Chao’ as a background precursor to this.

What works and what doesn’t will always be to some degree subjective regarding modern avant-garde metal. One hesitates to even apply that label to Fryktelig Støy, so clear is their intention over and above their manipulation of different genres. And that’s essentially my rule of thumb when regarding music so clearly attempting to mesh disparate and sometimes incongruous styles together. If there is an overarching vision and identity, then the material is merely a means to an end. The oddly primal, physical darkness expressed on ‘Incandescent’ is so distinctive and so well realised that style or even technique is almost incidental. The manipulation of metallic technique – chiefly the still prevalent reliance on riffs – is elegantly folded into an exploration of a unique, and at times oppressive darkness, one expanded upon and aided by an informal ambient impetus, flooding the album with ambiguity, tension, and character.