Beats and yelling: Imbolc

Sette Cornici di Purificazione
Out 27th February on Masked Dead Records

The third album from this Italian entity is an expansive, cinematic, and ambitious work of hyper charged melodic black metal. It manages to salvage the Cascadian style from its terminal blandness by recontextualising its open, cathartic demeanour into a more clarified, sharper expression of energised riffing, tied together with narrative purpose whilst ranging through a number of moods and techniques with abandon, from brighter classic metal euphoria, to intimate folk refrains, and the open panorama of traditional second wave black metal. Emperor and early Satyricon elevating the rocky pomp of Agalloch in a concoction that reads all wrong but succeeds in execution.

The production is relatively modest. Sharp enough to at least echo the symphonic sentiments of the genre in its mid-90s pomp, but it’s an orchestration expressed primarily through the sweeping guitar lines, leaving any keyboard ornamentation as a matter of implication, such additional decoration being largely awol for the first half of the album, only to take on a greater role as the guitars back away into sparser textural statements as the album progresses.

The guitar tone itself is sharp and clear, thick enough to flesh out the bulk of the mix whilst still paying homage to the cold blade required to bring this style of black metal to bear. Drums are left relatively – and refreshingly – raw, unfurnished by any extravagant reverb. This allows them to cut clearly through the mix, offering a solid, expressive foundation, emphasising the lavish contouring of the guitars without detracting from them. This being a more riff driven as opposed to atmospheric affair they are given licence to articulate more elaborate patterns which allows them to work in tension and release to great effect. Harsh, mid-range vocals offer a welcome degree of animalistic aggression in this otherwise regal setting, anchoring the music to the primordial soup of the genre’s origins.

Each track feels like a piece of theatre, frontloaded with sharp melodic lines that flow out of the dense array of riffs, only for the material to marinade in more open chord sequences and breaks into clean guitar interludes that link into a finale. Spoken word samples and loose vocal theatre enhances the multi-modal delivery of these tracks, as they express both a purely musical and a narrative intention. The material growing darker and more tortured as the album progresses from tones of hope and defiance into a grey, despairing soundscape. 

There are many crowd pleasing moments scattered across this album (the closing anthemic sequence to ‘Architecture of Suicide’ for example), but placed in their proper context and patiently prepared for they feel earned, more rewarding for the fact that Imbolc are meticulous composers and arrangers. Keeping more than a close eye on the whole allows them to pick and mix different elements from across black metal’s multiple threads, taking the time to work each module into the central program. This makes the listening experience feel like an extended trek across a range of different landscapes and environments, each one gradually giving way to the other. There is a natural progression and flow to the album despite the energy and density of individual segments. All is presented without incongruity. In this context, we could view this album’s success as a result of clever arrangement as much as anything else. Take some individual elements out of context and they would appear as generic, gauche even. But set against the opulent backdrop of the compositions in the round, each element plays its role and works to deliver the final, ambitious statement lurking behind each piece.