Mittags-Abgrund: Mittags-Abgrund
Out 15th September on Darkness Shall Rise Productions
True to the legacy of Russian black metal, this is a piece of impeccably landscaped material, conjuring a fully scoped out environment before our eyes, vast and inhospitable whilst compelling the listener onward, provoking their impulse for exploration. However, Mittags-Abgrund go further in populating this terrain with activity, life, conflict, struggle. The setting may be sparse in the mould of the Blazebirth Hall or more accurately later Hate Forest albums, but the foreground is rife with choppy interchanges, gradually evolving harmonic lead material, and a more active rhythm section willing to upset the constant stream of melody with staccato breaks and the frequent signposting of drum fills.
A warm, borderline fuzzy mix encases this oddly binary experience. The rhythm guitars are bassier than is typical for black metal, but they are overlayed with additional layers of lead material, the tone of which is truer to a traditional black metal delivery, thus lending all a cold and clarified hue. Drums are equally bass heavy, injecting extra muscle into an otherwise richly textured performance, one that takes many complicating sojourns away from linear throughlines common to this brand of black metal. This furnishes the music with an inherent tension that runs through every chord. It is not permitted to simply rest into the candyfloss of ambience that would satisfy the textural whims of blackgaze fans. An underlying current of this music simply refuses to buckle and rest, supplementing the atmospheric potential with a proactive, life affirming spirit. Mid-range vocals reminiscent of Satyr circa ‘Nemesis Divina’ play up to both impulses within the music, adopting the cadential phrasing of traditional song despite the distorted delivery, whilst occasionally soaring into extended notes evoking a more open, reverential disposition.
On a structural level, pieces seem to oscillate between ambient and lyrical impulses, a conflict that comes to define how the narrative arc is phrased. Simple refrains are repeated but undergo minor developments in accent or emphasis, many taking on a carefree folklike demeanour, enhanced by the addition of slurred clean vocals, before such intimacy is cut short and more elongated ambient material begins to take shape in the form of extended tremolo runs. Death metal works as a background adjudicator, linking diametrically opposed ideas together through rhythmically and melodically tangential deviations that in turn flesh out these pieces, broadening the scale and widening the scope and gravitas over and above the modesty implied by the runtime.
This is a storied album. It is presented as an epic narrative handed down through history, told in episodic form as different characters, events, settings, and moods unfold. From vast open spaces to campfire songs or a deeper rumination on mythology, to the blunt brutality of conflict and the strife of confronting nature directly, bereft of modern cheat codes. Like all good stories it touches on moods from the triumphalist to the despondent, offering uplifting moments as brief compensation for an otherwise overwhelmingly glum proposition. As a piece of artistry it is adept at knitting together immersive, imposing atmospheric threads with tightly arranged riff sequences, striking in their simple melodicism, resulting in a work that feels both grounded and earthy yet always keeping one eye on the stars above.
Charnel Spirit: Blood Prophecy
Out 4th September on Amor Fati
Black metal pivoting on a simple, repetitive riff usually built from little more than two or three chords, with development coming from simple lead refrains placed on top to create the feeling of motion. In this sense it feels like a simplified version of classic era Mayhem via early Dark Funeral. Light symphonics do indeed enhance the otherwise rather basic material, buttressing the textural layers in the absence of any compelling musical dynamism. This demo does tempt one’s intrigue via more elongated melodic currents unfurling in descending patterns. But, when the material is not tryingly repetitive with little in the way of artistry to justify the fact, it must reach back to imitating superior artists in order to flesh out the scant ideas on offer, and so collapses into another slog of derivative fanservice.
Violent Omen: Locomotive of Chaos
Out 13th September on Nocturnus Records
From members of the similarly oddball thrash entity Cosmic Jaguar comes this new album from Violent Omen. The music is pitched somewhere between the cold machinations of Die Kreuzen and a more cosmopolitan prog impulse that wanders between styles and techniques with ease. Comparisons to prog era Death are not unwarranted if for no other reason than the shared ancestry with Watchtower, although Violent Omen’s approach to technical composition veers far more explicitly into a dissonant informed surrealism. Although more obviously thrash than anything else, this album feels like a more efficient delivery mechanism for a futurist aesthetic than the opulent space operas offered by the likes of Cryptic Shift or Blood Incantation. The music is grounded, rough, biting. For all the three dimensional rhythmic and tonal subversion of expectations, this is still a down to earth album that addresses the listener directly as opposed to asking them to sit in place whilst they put on a show. In this sense it draws on the ethos of earthy, artisanal prog pioneered by Voivod. Heady enough to satisfy fans craving substantive engagement with music theory, but jagged and biting to the point that it looks like a product of underground spontaneity.
Slaughtercult: Devoured by Perversion
Out 24th September on Vicious Instinct Records
A first run at this album takes one on a fairly typical brutal death metal outing, oscillating with aplomb between maniacal blasting segments and agreeable breakdowns. But as the music unravels Slaughtercult create neat pockets for additional decorative material, whether it’s percussive eccentricity, surprisingly melodic accents, or an oddly conventional structural flow that feels incongruous within brutal death metal’s standard operating procedure of disruptive anomie. All are welcome, and make this album more accessible to any listeners put off by the at times homogenous slog presented by this style. This assessment may be a metalhead’s bias. Slaughtercult tend to be informed more by their death metal lineage than slam or hardcore, which gives these pieces a substantive underbelly by which to navigate the more labyrinthine, blasting sprawl. The result, whilst hardly profound, makes for at the very least a fun listen.
Massteron: Second in the Spheres
Out 24th September on ATMF
Despite the anachronistic cover which is just so charmingly early Photoshop, Massteron offer a very modern black metal album, but one that could be read as a corrective. Chasmic, reverb drenched, frantic, it bears all the hallmarks of the trend toward overwhelming the listener with aesthetic information in the hope that substance will follow. But unlike their contemporaries, Massteron have fleshed out their music with substantive ideas, and some clear breaks into traditional melodic territory that allows them to clearly communicate mood, theme, and drama in stark contrast to the more anomic tendencies of this style. The air is still dense, the impatience palpable, but Massteron throw out enough signposts and milestones by which to navigate this material that it feels intentional, rich with purpose, thus allowing us to place the more chaotic elements in a context and give them meaning over and above a mere cacophony of activity. A release as enjoyable as it is technically and stylistically aware of its surroundings.
Wharflurch: Mycodeath and Rebirth in the Outer Clusters
Out 25th September on Personal Records / Gurgling Gore / Dawnbreed
Maybe it’s the fact that I had a good night’s sleep, but Wharflurch’s developing brand of “everything” caverncore doesn’t grate on me as much as it used to. This is essentially a vehicle for showcasing finales of idiosyncratic death/doom in the disEMBOWELMENT model, although the contemporary reference for this style is probably Spectral Voice. In between these moments of jangle death metal we get dry, off the shelf OSDM fodder, the accessible groove of which is indicative of musicians more enamoured with the aesthetic of death metal (specifically death/doom) over any substantive engagement with the genre. As a result it falls into a common failing of modern metal, which is not lack of ideas but lack of purpose, of having nothing to communicate over and above a love of historical ephemera. The result is metal by vignette. An episodic structure where individual segments work in isolation but fail to connect up with anything. As a result Wharflurch fail to rise above syntax, conveying love but no meaning.
Flame: Ignis Draconis Daemonicus
Out 25th September on Primitive Reaction
A love letter to first wave black metal with a new lick of paint, the latest album from Flame is little more than a software update. The underlying functionality remains unchanged, but one may notice minor improvements in performance (or drops depending on your operating system). Blackened thrash forms the body of this material, adopting a determined march of militaristic pomp, augmented by lavish lead guitar work serving as a neat compliment to the package deal vocals. As it is with the riffs, so it is with the overall orientation of these tracks, as atmosphere and arrangement play second fiddle to performance, the sense of occasion underlining this is “metal’s metal”, primarily concerned with theatre, delivery, a physical, not spiritual release. As a piece of fanfic it’s certainly not the worst thing you’ll hear this year. Flame know how to communicate in this style and avoid the pitfall of falling back on the stadium metal posturing that blights so much of this brand of black metal, but setting that aside this album has little to offer beyond a continuation of business as usual.
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