Alex Poole is something of a phenom. From lo-fi black metal in Nashville with Troglodytic, to the ambient shoegaze of Esoterica, to the ravishing grimness of Kreig and the psychedelic dissonance of Skáphe, he has blazed a pretty remarkable, and definitely singular, path through the metal world.
Now, as a (almost) solo project, bringing all his previous achievements in creating atmosphere his own way and disregarding the sanctified kvlt order, Poole has unleashed Häxanu on us.
In many ways this is a stripped down, streamlined Poole. Much of the more interesting approaches he has developed over the years are gone, replaced with unbridled aggression and outright hostility as the prime atmospheric components.
To my mind, this album is a complete triumph, a real statement. None of Poole's earlier bands have been very trve to the kvlt. He has, throughout his career made his own way, built his own take on all the constituent pieces of black metal, and in the words of Jacob Buczarski of Mare Cognitum Poole's “rejection of traditional black metal tropes in favor his own signature method of building atmosphere creates an experience that manages to be both meditative and punishing simultaneously.”
So when it came time for him to make a straight-ahead throwback black metal album, he did just that, and he did it better than damn near anyone else. This is 100% mid 1990s black metal in a really satisfying way.
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