Dysthen: Dysthen
Out 29th May, self-released
Brings a tight, crisp survey of Nordic black metal that, whilst not exactly offering anything new, justifies the extent of its emotive intensity through a sharp consolidation of melodic talking points alongside a bracing momentum sustained throughout the course of this brief EP. In this endeavour it conveys a sense of the epic within a relatively short runtime, stretching out the listener’s perception of time by asking them to undertake a journey that, whilst obvious in terms of sequencing, is rewarding regardless. The seamless blending of melodic euphoria with light dissonance, jagged staccato edges with flowing tremolo passages, and a fine balance of trancelike galloping rhythms with blasting ambience and funereal marches all supervene on one another into a cinematic unity. Beginning, middle, and end are all clearly articulated and spelt out in neat episodic chunks, evincing a compositional nous that is all too rare amongst Dysthen’s contemporaries.
Meltification: Melfitication
Out 29th May on Extremely Rotten Productions
Similar to early Malevolent Creation, this album bypasses the more cerebral aspirations of death metal at its maturation but achieves an equivalent expression of reckless intensity. The anchoring of punk, despite the obvious hardcore lineage, is relinquished in favour of death metal in micro form via the bonding agent of thrash metal. The result is topographically similar to a standard hardcore or grindcore album in that tracks are kept relentlessly short and usually only consist of two or three riffs, but the overarching impression one is left with is both a physical and a spiritual intensity, the latter coming through via the heavy accenting of metallic riffs which in turn elevates the relentless percussive barrage of its punk DNA. Vocals officiate this uncertain union with their aggressive hardcore bark, but one that clearly acknowledges their post death metal context. In this sense we are left with an album leveraging the reckless humour of Brutal Truth alongside the understated horror of Blood, achieving complexity in microcosm to offset the inherent simplicity it wishes to foreground.
Somnia Finem: Desassossego
Out 29th May on Signal Rex
Stylistically restrained as far as modernist black metal is concerned, containing a somewhat supressed melodic character that achieves expression through implication as opposed to heavy handed exposition. It falls down in diluting the more ethereal refrains with the domesticity of rock, apparently deployed to achieve a sense of contrast between open flight and grounded realism, but resulting in nothing more than an uneasy aesthetic palette that repeatedly pulls the listener out of the moment. In surveying the material in the round it’s clear why Somnia Finem interrupt the momentum of their black metal selves with such trivialities, namely that there are simply not enough ideas in their locker to furnish us with a complete picture as expressed through the language of one genre. They therefore reach for genre splicing to short circuit their way to a full length album without doing the leg work of stylistic development in an EP format. It’s not the genre splicing itself that’s at issue however, but the fact that one element within this brew actively works against the other, thus resulting in a disconnected, frustratingly self-sabotaging experience.
Dead Void: Cranial Devastation
Out 5th June on Dark Descent Records/Me Saco Un Ojo
Leverages the spirit of early Autopsy into a darker, more visceral place via a modern caverncore affectation and a more restless mindset. At first glance it looks for all the world like a concise if generic take on death/doom. But as the album progresses cracks make themselves known, and they’re hardly unique to this outfit. Once again we are presented with the veneer of something, an allusion toward a more substantive experience that never quite reaches fruition within the substance of the music itself. A collage of ideas, no doubt lifted from the knowledge and pet passions of its individual members, but one that fails to coalesce into anything more than a love letter to formative works. There is nothing entirely terrible about any individual instance of this, and indeed Dead Void appear more adept than most, but metal has long since buckled under the sheer volume of qualitatively similar releases engaged – and limited to – an obsessive trope worship, a gesture toward something that metal’s current crop are forever unable or unwilling to flesh out, for the simple reason that they continue to be rewarded for furnishing fans with the thing they recognise, fans with little incentive to inspect what flashes across their newsfeed with any degree of critical detail precisely because the next item is already locked and loaded and demanding a few seconds of their attention.
Grimveil: Beneath the Veil of Silent Woods
Out 5th June on Purity Through Fire
Side project from members of Order of Nosferat and Tårfödd brings the same lackadaisical approach to a more explicitly naturalist form of black metal. Namely a lack of detail, joy in presentation, or originality. One can fall short on any one of these virtues if the listener is compensated by the others. Sadly for Grimveil the broad brushstroke approach leaves one feeling hollow precisely because the music is delivered with such a procedural, plodding gait one is left cold by the tedium. These shortcomings are not made up for by any hint at originality, which is hardly surprising given the quality of their other projects and their prominence on the Purity Through Fire roster. The result is another superfluously generic example of modern black metal celebrating its own existence and well guarded obscurity, the purpose and object of which has long been forgotten to time.
Riena: Miekka ja varjo
Out 5th June on Signal Rex
Nails a certain kind of mid-90s lo-fi aesthetic. But all too often feels like listening to a black metal musician running through their favourite techniques and tricks to warm up, with little in the way of any guiding hand to stitch the whole together. Therefore, despite the strict stylistic unity dictated by the demo quality production there is little coherence or identity behind any of these pieces aside from a highlight reel. This seems to be the fate of extreme metal’s strongest holdouts. Flooded with artists only ever able to mimic the form whilst never becoming fully conversant in it, let alone able to contribute any new vocabulary. Getting the expression over the line is now considered enough to inflict it on the public. What it says, any statement either traditional or progressive (in the musical sense), is now deemed to be too much effort. All that matters is the ability to express within a preconfigured language, beckoning in an audience programmed to accept this aesthetic language as both means and end. Any higher interrogation on the purpose of it all, the actual coherence or otherwise of the music at the level of music is now rejected, treated with a rampant hostility amongst the swelling crowds of casualised fans, to whom enjoyment of aesthetic language is now considered sacrosanct.
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