Victimarum: Seitsemän soihdun valossa
Out 11th October on Signal Rex
This brighter iteration of melodic black metal manages to achieve a sense of activism and storytelling in a way that pushes back against the empty anthemism rampant in the genre since its 90s heyday. But despite the album starting strong, Victimarum are unable to sustain their momentum without leaning on tried and tested rock formats, centring obvious and basic hooks alongside plodding, four/four rhythms serving as filler between the more interesting ideas. Where this subgenre at its height pointed toward a synthesis between heavy metal and post Bathory extreme metal via cinematic unity and neoclassical flair, Victimarum only hint and gesture toward this, falling back on cheap emotional catharsis via commonplace cadential orientations, rendering each passage predictable, knowable, domestic. Despite the strength of isolated moments, the material is stretched, diluted, and rendered bland as a result, the shadow of a superior album lurking beneath the crumbling edifice.
Penthos: Erevos
Out 15th October on Darkness Shall Rise
Conjures a sense of dark intensity through gradualist development of simple black metal riffs played at speed. Each track pivots round a memorable, central refrain, surrounded by ancillary material and light accenting to give the main thread a sense of occasion despite the rudimentary nature of the music. The high melodicism of second wave black metal is imbued with a sense of barbarism lifted from Celtic Frost via Darkthrone. A rhythmic, active ambience permeating the music to offset the raw physicality of the foundation. Mournful harmonies decorate these tracks at key junctures, allowing Penthos to squeeze more mileage out of each riff, thus extending the sense of ordeal and strife. There is a rawness to both the performances and the production itself that one can’t help but read as authentic. The album is derivative, even a little flat in places, but one is left with the impression that it comes from a place of genuine knowledge and appreciation for the traditions it draws from, elevating it above other comparable recent offerings.
Pest: Eternal Nightmares
Out 17th October on Heidans Hart
Deliberate, torturous black metal with a long attention span, seeing basic ideas complicate over the course of a track, until we arrive at an entirely different place to where we started despite our consciousness that each micro development made sense in context. For that reason, even at its most tedious, the music imbues the listener with an awareness that each element is in place for a reason, and will in some sense payoff. In this context, Pest provide a useful sequel to the repetitive, trancelike gallops of late 90s Ukrainian black metal, repopulating these meditative, captivating examples of pulsing ambience with lyrical melodic signatures, creating an active, motivating impulse where before there was nothing but mere landscaping. It’s this marriage of atmosphere and intimate, characterful melody and riff that grants this otherwise modest presentation with an oddly compelling identity.
Dysylumn: Abstraction
Out 17th October on Signal Rex
Retains the intent of post rock despite working to a denser timetable of busy lead guitar material, cascading drums, and some attempt at stringing riffs together. The issue is that, despite superficial reshuffles to the material, the music circles around the same moods, themes, and techniques with very little let up. Hardcore vocals offset the guttural distortion to contrive a sense of emotive stakes. The lead guitar material, whilst deliberately repetitive, is deployed to create a sense of size and openness within the mix, thus limiting the expressive capacity of the instrument. Drums, although competent, do little more than switch tempos as a way to interject and shift the balance of the music. This constant restatement of the same theme with the drums slowing to half tempo is a common and tiresome trait in modern metal, a shortcut to creating significance and contouring in the music without actually having to compose their way to achieving these effects. The lasting result is a monotonous, one dimensional slog of overcooked post metal attempting to disguise the fact by packing out the mix with sleight of hand gestures, papering over cracks.
Spøgelse: Spøgelse II
Out 24th October on Welfare Sounds & Records
Emphasises the evolution of early d-beat punk with speed metal, adopting the shortform sloganeering of the former with the strong melodic identity of the latter. The bacchanalian message of the music offset by a remarkably refined, hi-fidelity delivery (by punk standards), graduating catchy hooks to a place of purpose and determination. Despite dabbling in the party metal stylings of a Municipal Waste, the music retains a reserved dignity via its deadpan delivery, linking the youthful zeal of early thrash with its aspirational roots. Each track pivots on a simple, central riff, allowing the vocals to mirror this topography, each chorus centring on the repetition of a single line (usually the track’s title). Guitar accents and solos provide scant complication to the picture, creating a sense of urgency over and above the galloping drum patterns. All par for the course for retro punk, but Spøgelse’s close alignment with metallic traditions injects this material with a degree of significance and heaviness that supersedes more hyperactive iterations of punk operating at the borders of metal.
Heteropsy: Embalming
Out 31st October on Caligari Records
This is a classic case of an interesting idea failing in execution. The guitar tone that became a trope in the form of the Boss HM-2 pedal has become the preserve of bands playing little more than rehashed d-beat riffs and tired melodic metal offcuts. Heteropsy buck this trend by seeking to utilise the virtues of this tone more creatively. The result is active, mournful death/doom that retains a sense of energy and aggression that only adds to the overall despondency of the music. Where they fall down is perhaps in being slightly over ambitious in terms of composition. Each track bursts with compelling ideas, unexpected junctures, and interesting twists. But Heteropsy seem a little over eager to lead themselves down leftfield routes that it comes at the cost of structural and tonal integrity. The flow at times can appear a little random, lacking direction or a solid orientation. All the elements are there, brimming with a character and life that has sadly become a rarity in modern death metal. All that’s missing is a firm foundation to tie them altogether.
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