Beats and yelling: Tyrannus

Mournhold
Out 15^th May on True Cult Records

Following a promising debut that stitched a foggy haze of thrash and melodic death metal with a thread of black metal, Tyrannus push this loose alliance to breaking point and gamble it all on the second album. Approaching ‘Mournhold’ is akin to taking the first few sips of a dubious pint of craft beer. Has the incongruous flavour concoction paid off as advertised? How does the sensation progress from the initial burst of flavour on the tongue to the deep undertones of its aftertaste? Judgement hangs by a thread as the intellect catches up with the gut.

Two or three pints in it becomes a little clearer what Tyrannus are up to. Despite the riff demographic being a near three way split between thrash, death, and black metal, this is best approached as a thrash album. But similar to the recent crop of Chilean thrash in Critical Defiance, Demoniac, and Mayhemic, the lasting impression is anything but one of pastiche. There is a refreshing honesty to the way Tyrannus seem to take great joy in constructing riffs, as galloping drum patterns and playful punk riffs lead seamlessly into flowing melodic euphoria or dark labyrinthine tremolo strummed passages. The genre hopping is at times jarring, but once one understands that a classicalist metal ethos remains the guiding hand at a structural level, with the more extreme elements applied as seasoning throughout (even reaching for driving goth rock by the closing number ‘Back to Grey’), the totality begins to come together. 

The production is rich and warm, allowing for full articulation during the choppier technical passages but swamping all in a murky, atmospheric haze, elevating the material without losing the finer detail. The drums retain an organic sheen that lends the performance a degree of authenticity, matching the flow of guitars as the fluidity of black metal passages collides against staccato melodic thrash refrains, one that demands total control over shifts in momentum, one that Tyrannus pull off without the experience feeling too curated. The guitar tone is kept deliberately generic, allowing it to do justice to the electric brew expressed across this album. Lead material is brief but characterful, adopting odd tonal centres that lend the music a degree of lyrical surrealism, hope caveated by lurking dread. Mid-range distorted vocals – most obviously the heir of Jeff Walker – ground all with a degree of aggression and immediacy. They are kept largely free of excessive reverb, the emphasis placed on rhythm and motion as opposed to sustained notes. This anchors the music in a metallic immediacy even through the headier passages of high melodicism.

Beyond genre sophistry, treating this as a heavily accented thrash album is akin to planting both feet on the ground in order to study the cosmos as opposed to floating through the void unanchored. It’s an orientation that brings this album’s more imaginative elements into sharper relief. But one could just as easily regard it as a broad survey of contemporary extreme metal undertaken by creative and knowledgeable musicians. A history of riffs melded together by a haunted yet oddly defiant voice. But ‘Mournhold’ justifies its unapologetic thrash regalia – elements that some artists may regard as overtly kitsch – by placing them on a level playing field with both the more abstract death metal punches and the open ended atmospherics of black metal. An explicitly and proudly “traditional” metal album able to accommodate corridors of complexity and nuance, a progressive impulse guided by one foot firmly rooted in historical continuity.