Beats and yelling: Vintregal

Назустріч Останньому Світанку (Towards the Last Dawn)
Out 29^th May on ATMF

The debut EP from this Ukrainian outfit is reminiscent of early Abigor in the way it roots a romanticist aspiration in the adventurism of medievally derived melodic lines. But it manages to contain this within an expression of metal at once strikingly energetic and conflicted. There is a frantic push and pull across these tracks, as the rhythmic momentum continually yanks the emotive currents in antagonistic directions. Despite this, a clear poetic character emerges from the combat, achieving an emotional catharsis that feels earned.

The production embodies a clunky, 90s sheen, as every element is dialled up with a degree of intensity that today’s DAW users tend to discipline themselves away from. The resulting battle for dominance over the mix between the threnodic guitar lines, warlike drums, and emergent synth lines gives rise to what feels like a living, breathing organicism over and above the sheer energy behind the compositions themselves. The result is an unstable entity, but one that draws a refreshing authenticity from this central, beating heart. The emergent experience envelopes the listener in its cinematic weight whilst retaining a rawness and genuine vitality that reaches back to black metal’s roots in the often lawless ethos of underground guitar music. The half clean bark of the vocals solidifies the rampant histrionics characterising this release. But again, it’s an emotivism that feels justified in the fraught circumstances they are placed within.

Vintregral’s is a highly riff centric form of black metal. The music is defined by the connecting threads of the dual guitar lines as they weave between primitivist bursts of speed and bright, flowing melodic lines, all undergirded by proactive, borderline combative drums. But the musical language expressed across ‘Towards the Last Dawn’ also transcends the immediacy of place. It situates the vocalist/narrator within a wider context of events and locations beyond their immediate purview. It does this by marrying a lyrical tendency with the epic soundscaping of an atmospheric tendency, through open tremolo passages and the subtle depth provided by the keyboard lines, all resulting in a totalising experience. A fully fleshed out world that is simultaneously populated with activity, conflict, strife, and resolution.

Such a completist expression is hard to find in the current black metal climate. It is one that both suggests a fully realised landscape and manages to activate it with narrative and emotive stakes. The experience is made all the more satisfying given that Vintregal achieve this within a mere half an hour runtime. A triumph of compositional efficiency as much as sheet creative will.