Putred: Blestemul din adânc
Out 20th March on Awakening Records
True to the formula laid out on the previous effort ‘Megalit al putrefacției’, for the most part Putred stick doggedly to plodding, Derketa-esque tempos as a means of both conjuring tension and allowing elegantly simple riff templates to extend their tendrils in multiple directions at once. The backbone of the album rests on a basic, clockwork groove, with riffs hanging off this framework which in turn forces them into a certain shape. Variety comes at the molecular level, as odd melodic accents, inventive guitar leads, and all manner of intriguing deviations emerge over the course of the album. But all reliably return to some central, meditative thread. The slower tempos afford the listener the chance to ponder these events in more detail, whilst the fact that things never descend into doom metal pacing somehow cocoons the mind into focus, there is no break into open, sustained chords unleashing despondent currents of downbeat defeatism, only the relentless coiling of this pervasively sweaty atmosphere.
As per the previous effort, the production is relatively thin. Raw but clear drums are given no further adornment, as if to emphasise their role as both a rhythmic but also philosophical anchor within this brew. The guitar tone, whilst bassy, is still thin and clarified by death metal standards. A throbbing low end gives way to crisp high lead melodies and the occasional hypnotic solo, surreal in their originality. A sharp bass tone cuts through with ease, played with the demeanour of a more technical entity. The slower pace of Putred’s style allows for more creative wandering at the low end, with basslines often deviating away from simple root note stenography into developing their own counter riffs which are fully articulated without cluttering up the mix. A duel attack of deadpan guttural vocals alongside a more proactive, mid-range rasp completes the sense of disorientation, an echo chamber made all the more unsettling due to the fragile, awkward pacing.
In terms of production, tempo, performance, delivery, Putred show a lot of ankle by death metal standards. There is very little to dress up the music. Ostensibly it is about as basic and easy to follow as they come. But this lulls the listener into a false sense of security. As an array of ornamentation gets to work across this material to upset the overall flow. A panorama of horrors both at the material and spiritual level. At its foundations, the music stumbles over itself, not so much a swagger but as the faltering, persistent gait of the undead. Riffs themselves appear basic at first, but reliably dissolve this simplicity into the uncanny, the familiar made strange. At the ornamental level this is a masterclass in the art of accenting, with each phrase bookended by some bizarre guitar accent or lick that manages to complicate an otherwise achingly rudimentary scene. And then of course there’s the unmistakable guitar work of Aguillon, who’s unique approach to lead melody perfectly crowned off the previous effort, along with material from Vorus, the sister project of Putred. He never over delivers, often implying something more than what’s actually put to paper, but his style has become easily identifiable (a rarity in the current climate).
With this latest effort Putred seal their reputation as one of the unsung workhorses of modern death metal. Their artistry is an understated one, burrowing beneath the folds of death metal’s underbelly and scraping out new lifeforms from the filth. No technical showcase, no miasma of overcooked dissonance or cavernously drenched mix to cloak a lack of substance. Just raw, imaginative death metal eking out new creative spaces from a place that may at first look like restrictive simplicity.
Vermianaevus: Vermianaevus
Out 30th October on Amor Fati
Reminiscent of Belial in that this feels like a death metal band playing black metal, but unlike the majority of “blackened death metal” outfits Vermianaevus “commit to the bit” so to speak, exercising the power and muscle of death metal whilst leaning into the austerity and sparsity of black metal at the compositional level. The opening track ‘Nexus of Inexorable Darkness’ kicks things off nicely with a six minute continuous riff, the only means of navigation being a subtly ascending bassline. One almost wishes Vermianaevus had the gall to stick with this formula throughout. And although subsequent tracks limit themselves to a persistent, central theme, they eventually branch out in multiple directions, essentially pivoting on simple, droning death metal riffs delivered with the repetition and fixation one would expect of atmospheric black metal. In this sense they present as a more explicitly black metal version of someone like Pestilength. A debut album aesthetically congruous with current trends, but notable in its willingness to flatten off needless complexity into a focused and ultimately more compelling proposition of futurist black metal.
Αχέροντας: For the Blood of Tiamat – Praxis I – XXX Years Anniversary of Magick and Metamorphosis
Out 30th October on Osmose Productions
Greek mainstays return for another EP of overwrought, ritualistic symphonic black metal. It combines the intensely lavish approach of ‘Anthems to Welkin at Dusk’ with the more stilted pacing of Southern European black metal, which often takes the form of a stage play more than flowing metal compositions. The resulting unity of these two decidedly maximalist styles of black metal is every bit as overworked as one might expect, although it must be said there is a degree of focus to these compositions sometimes lacking on previous output from this artist. Each sequence introduces clearly expressed ideas without overlap, with no bleed from one passage to the next, meaning each new riff, melody, or theme is given full voice, allowing the listener to focus their attention somewhat. In this sense one could say that some restraint was exercised across these compositions despite the excess of material. Tightly placed melodies, vocal acrobatics, rich synth lines, and an orchestral delivery, all give way to what is ultimately an episodic structure, moving from one phrase to the next in clearly signposted developments which allows for some artistic expression over and above the opulent presentation.
Invultation: Inferno Descends
Out 30th October on Sentient Ruin
War metal brings the focus back to grinding black metal riffs, intercutting flowing blast-beat runs with staccato breaks and the occasional drop in pace to allow the material to air out. Riffs are largely drawn from the death metal oeuvre, Incantation via Angelcorpse, but are about as basic as they come, pivoting on the sheer intensity of their delivery or else rank repetition more common to black metal. The resulting material finds a decent balance between the monomaniacal austerity of war metal and a more varied, restless entity keen to branch into new ideas, techniques, and moods. This is necessary given the apparently intentional lack of atmospheric flair, as if the focus should be directed entirely toward the interchange of riffs and the simple yet effective rhythmic switch ups. Despite the variation however, it’s clear when taken in its totality that this is intended to be received as a relentless, militaristic assault at the intersection of fragmentary death metal, grind, and black metal, delivered by an artist willing – and able given the quality of the riffing – to connect this form with a wider breadth of influences than is usual for this style.
Arckanum: Beswærilsin
Out 31st October on Darkness Shall Rise
Viking rock album disguised as something more. Despite the longform songs and black metal techniques these tracks flow like simple punk anthems, accessible, predictable, and ultimately uninformative. Riffs plod along in tedious melodic lines that constantly imply the coming of developmental material that never arrives. Vocal contours follow the flat cadence of a pop song. Thus everything falls back on switch ups in tempo to contrive a sense of drama, something for the music to wrap around in the absence of any compositional development. The equivalent of a wank that never arrives, the melodic implication teases at more but seems unable to bring anything to a place of fruition. Whether this is by accident or design is anyone’s guess. If Arckanum thought they were writing blackened Viking epics and are simply unable to do this convincingly by this point. Or whether the intention was to lean into a more straightforward song pattern but were unable to flesh them out with some identity, and so tried to disguise the fact with bloated track lengths and the constant addition of new link phrases that go nowhere.
Disembody: Awakening of Ancient Evil
Out 4th November on Helldprod
In another timeline Slayer followed up ‘Hell Awaits’ with an album like this and became forever known as the founders of black metal alongside Bathory. The physical, chromatic persistence of the music’s punk lineage unifies with wandering, dark melodies that give the music a symphonic sheen, one that both black and death metal via Morbid Angel would inculcate into their DNA. Disembody’s approach anchors itself in thrashing immediacy, constantly refreshing the tonal picture via the freedom of power chord riffing. This in turn prepares the ground for dark melodic structures to emerge, drawn from the classic horror tradition and, when placed in context, presents a grandiose picture of liberated, arcane evil. Despite the blatant pastiche of this material, Disembody are both more accurate stenographers than many of their contemporaries and more creative ones, injecting a wealth of unexpected narrative junctures and possibilities into material that nevertheless feels “of” a historical context, hence why this material tempts one into counterfactual thought experiments on the evolution of 80s extreme metal.
Sentries: Disciples of Void & Fire
Out 4th November on Amor Fati
Another murky whirlwind of cavernous, dissonant adjacent black metal. If you were to place Sentries in a lineup with any number of stylistically similar bands they would be completely indistinguishable. This is because they rely entirely on aesthetics to create an artistic statement. Namely guitar tone, production, vocal style, and a general over reliance on colliding dissonance with traditional tonality with little thought given to how themes are actually developed through these techniques, i.e. the technique becomes the expression rather than the means. Peeling back the layers to study the material beneath reveals a series of garden variety ideas, inoffensive but utterly disposable in the modern context, the histrionic presentation made that bit more hollow due to the fact that it’s put in service of nothing. Sentries are just the latest in a long line of artists enamoured with a certain aesthetic strain of modern black metal, looking to leverage this into an artistic expression in its own right with no thought for the substance beneath, and as a result have produced an entirely forgettable album that could easily have been written by dozens of other artists.
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