By John Bedard
This one is interesting. The music is very clearly black metal and the band even describe themselves as “confrontational black metal” – and, while this all true, I thought there were many aspects of the album that seems pretty optimistic. It is not the same dark just for the sake of being dark that we often hear in the genre – but instead they seem to push the lines of the genre a little and end up creating a rather unique tone. I was rather impressed by this because I was going into this thinking I knew what to expect but instead I found myself pleasantly surprised.
Like I said above there was this mix of optimism mixed into the music that I was not expecting. This was specifically in the instrumentation. While the tones used still have that heavy guitar and base we expect in black metal and we have those aggressive drums with heavy use of the kick peddle that are also signature of the genre there are many times where the style will have subtle changes that almost seem to shed hope onto the track. I know this is extremely abstract and in truth it is probably something you need to hear rather than have me try to describe it but I think most people have an idea what I am talking about when music will bring forth emotions when you don’t expect it.
When we get to the vocals we are back into a more standard black metal territory and that optimism I was talking about before is suppressed. I would say that the vocal style does have a harsher more aggressive tone than many others in the genre. There is a very driven distortion in his voice that stands out wonderfully. They also contrast the harsh vocals occasionally with some spoken word from older recordings or from their own non-distorted shouted vocals. It adds a nice flavor to many tracks.
This album is brutal. I rather enjoyed the added variety in the emotional makeup of the music. The whole album had this no matter how dark things are there is always hope no matter how faint kind of feeling to it that I appreciated. While I have heard that before it is pretty rare in the genre and was welcome. I think that a lot of people will like this album. Sure, it is not earth-shattering, but it is an enjoyable addition to the genre and fans of black metal should give it a chance.
‘Wings Of The Joyful’ is released on Friday (20 March). You can get your copy HERE.
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