Beats and yelling: Porenut

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Out 29^th August, Nomad Sky Diaries

Porenut harness a wealth of competing strands both in and outside of metal to craft a surprisingly compact statement of uncanny black metal for this latest outing. Previous offerings were perhaps a little too whacky for their own good, but here these eccentric details are properly integrated into their context, giving the music a surreal, dreamlike quality despite the rampant activity.

Porenut combine the playfulness of arcane Central European black metal with a Nordic frigidity, bound together with punk and folk elements, and even a touch of post rock. The finished product is still relatively austere black metal, at least in terms of presentation, but the flow of each piece is just a little off the pace, making the overarching experience explicitly left of centre without the need to bash the listener over the head with quirkiness.

Trebly guitar achieves a richness through compounding layers, individual leads emerging from the mix with apparent spontaneity. Despite the density of the guitar tracks, the bass cuts through with rigour, laying down tight, pulsing lines that undergird the overall pulse with a degree of intentionality. Drums are perhaps a little quiet in the mix, but their presence can still be felt, drawing on rockist back-beats every bit as much as a mid-paced blast.

Due to the idiosyncratic tonal play across the album the overall mood is hard to grasp. Wistful, bittersweet, or just odd. It grounds the fantastical wanderlust of traditional black metal with the knowable realism of folk or punk to create a liminal, peripheral experience. No single mood or theme is lent into too dramatically, creating tension from the constantly unfurling material that seems to be in a terminal state of flux, yet bound together by some intentional underlying thread.

It would be a leap to call this avant-garde, but there is a degree of loving subversion at play across this album. Lifting prima facie garden variety techniques and methods and placing them into a new context, rendering them weird and unfamiliar in the process. That the overarching aesthetic is still black metal will largely determine the listener base that finds its way to this album. But ultimately this is a work that draws on multiple traditions in order to create its own, self-creating world that enters the ear almost free of context and prejudice owing to the rampant, carefree sense of play evinced throughout.