Isen: Zaklinani posledni zimy
Out 5th September on Northern Silence Productions
Basic, repetitive black metal achieves a sense of triumphalism through a gradualist development of riffs. Each one is treated more like a single refrain, repeated ad infinitum to create a sense of size and scope. This is subsequently forced through subtle shifts in emphasis and pitch, until new material is eventually introduced to signpost the listener toward a dramatic break, a shift in the stakes of the music itself. Vocals are perhaps a little too eccentric for this relatively austere setting, adopting a mix of high end distortion and that pained clean shouting with excessive reverb applied that so many artists use to contrive a sense of theatre. Despite the general techniques and atmospheric intent being pretty bread and butter for atmospheric black metal, Isen have come out with a strong statement of minimalism through riffcraft that draws the listener into its world with a subtlety and poise that remains compelling.
Echoes of Gloom: The Mind’s Eternal Storm
Out 25t September on ATMF
It sounds innocent enough. Write music on the basis of drawing together several different genres you like. Mix them around a bit, and see where it takes you. Innocent…until you subject it to critical scrutiny. This confused array of post rock, punk, post hardcore, and groove metal achieves little beyond squishy sentimentalism and circular emotive gestures. It’s sometimes worth remembering that adults write music like this, and what this implies. A crisp and cinematic mix that serves the underlying atmospheric intent of the music well is about the kindest thing one could say about this album. For the rest, basic melodicism fitting of a nursery rhyme, catchy hooks disguised beneath surface level “epic” trappings, and heartfelt anthemic bursts to retain the attention of a more pop or rock minded audience.
Dunes of Ash: The Fall of the Seven Sisters
Out 26th September on Signal Rex
Dunes of Ash are a classic example of an artist that understands black metal as an affectation more than a genre. Mix together enough intensity, violence, drama, the occasional show stopper riff, and plaudits will follow. The issue – a shortcoming similar to Teitanblood – is that for all the fanfare, this artist has very little to say. The songs fail to connect up into any coherent statement on anything. For all the conviction behind the performances, it serves only to compensate for lacklustre writing and arrangement, and when that fails, hammy vocal theatrics will distract the majority of fans primed to believe that this is actually the kind of experience they desire without interrogating the actual value behind the product. Songs limp along in flat, repetitive cycles, lacking motion, momentum, or dynamics. Development, when it does come, is conditional and banal, thus leaving listeners willing to dig beneath the veneer with very little reason to stick around for more than a cursory listen.
Kingdom: Primeval Cult of Strength in the Womb of Suffer
Out 26th September on Osmose Productions
Marries the muscular inanity of Behemoth with the dumb groove physicality of latter day Deicide. When not attempting to overwhelm the listener with raw power, Kingdom attempt to flesh out a melodic signature, but as this material largely derives from what is now referred to as blackened death metal (think Belphegor), the actual statements amount to little more than aesthetic flourishes, with no coherent language developed to bind the material together into any meaningful statement. The result is the musical equivalent of jump-scares, cheap and overused shortcuts to creating some kind of dramatic tension with no underlying symbolism to justify its existence. Catchy melodicism, bolstered by a solid, easily followable rhythmic groove, cuts to headbangable mid-paced rhythms, all are breaks in the momentum allowing the audience to catch up with the material and feel like they are involved. And in pivoting their approach entirely toward crowd pleasing elements, Kingdom have stripped their artistry down to a series of familiar tropes that otherwise have no relation to each other.
Black Chamber Music: The Nine Lands of Oblivion
Out 30th September, self-released
Reminiscent of Switzerland’s Mordor for its use of serial vignettes to piece together a larger structure, creating the impression of moving through a vast stone structure, each chamber emitting its own unique sound world. The ambience of Black Chamber Music sits somewhere between minimalist sound art and dungeon synth. The rhythmic qualities of the harpsichord, alongside timpani and other percussive patches creating contouring in stark contrast to the underlying synth drone. The latter of which emerges in stop start sequences, each new tone and note cluster announcing the arrival of a new chapter within each lengthy piece. Through this incremental build of micro elements, the most rudimentary melodic content is elevated to orchestration, an immersive backdrop onto which the jagged edges of tentative beats are layered. Emptiness is used to great effect to create tension between the subtly enriched content, with basic drones or silence deployed to extend out the transition from one phase to the next in unpredictable waves of development. The result is an original take on medievalist ambience, one that manages to convey a sense of horror and darkness through simple permutations of timbre and melodic shapes serving as a useful commentary to the more literal interpretations found across the majority of modern dungeon synth.
Umulamahri: Learning the Secrets of Acid
Out 1st October on Ordovician Records
Attempts to leverage post ‘Obscura’ Gorguts for its avant-garde credentials, but as these musicians have very little to say beyond a selection of techniques they are forced to pad out this material with dark ambient and noise sequences that I’m sure they thought would create tension, but only serve to kill any momentum they manage to accrue. For the rest, slam and modern hardcore riffs are smuggled beneath a noise rock veneer, achieving little of artistic merit beyond an empty statement of extremity. It becomes less clear why this artist has even chosen to associate themselves with death metal given the lack of any coherent riff language. As the EP progresses they clearly grow tired with even trying to rip off Gorguts and relapse into the safer territory of meaningless static, droning chords, and slam breakdowns punctuating ambient interludes. Filler that could have been elaborated into an interesting noise EP but instead is relegated to propping up a statement of half baked metallic detritus.
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