Mānbryne - Heilsweg: O udręce ciała i tułaczce duszy

 

Well holy shit. No one saw this coming. Debut albums are often pretty good. Rarely are they AotY contenders. However, this album, translated as Of Carnal Torment and The Wandering of the Soul, certainly is.

Is it a super group? Kind of. Except the Polish metal scene doesn't really work in the way you might expect. Many musicians are in overlapping projects of all sorts, so instead of a bunch of steady bands and an occasional supergroup, you have a spider web of permutations.

The permutation here is Priest (the drummer from Odraza), Wyrd (the touring bassist for Blaze of Perdition), S. (the vocalist of Blaze of Perdition), and newcomer Renz playing guitar.

The result of this recipe is essentially the album everyone was upset that Blaze of Perdition didn't release last year. Melodic, riff-filled, unmistakably Eastern European. Add in a neckbreaking pace and a bunch of gang vocals, sprinkle liberally with samples and you get something furious, cavernous, melodic, melancholic, and complex. Exactly as black metal should be.