Vallendusk - Heralds of Strife

The 2010s were not exactly the most fertile era for atmospheric and / or raw black metal. The forces of lo-fi raw black metal were losing ground daily to the revisionist forces of crisp hi-fi death metal type production, complete with programmed drums and glossy, plastic-toy sonic packaging. Exactly one band (Windir) was able to build something still emotionally interesting out of that, and everything else is essentially of interest only to the completionist collector.

Having been birthed in that era, Vallendusk was definitely in the proggy, folky, post-rock-y, super clean production camp.

Fortunately, they have since seen the error of their ways and leaned a hell of a lot harder into the grand, sweeping melodies of atmo-black, while keeping the sparkingly clean guitar tones and emotional crescendos of the proggy blackgaze thing they were on the cusp of with earlier work.

So, if you'd like to be a black metal fan but the production of raw bm puts you off, here is a good place to start.

Comments

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that. Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial . Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own. Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. ...

Valais - Valais

I love the pathological hatred of self-promotion that defines a lot of underground black metal, but it sure does make it hard to write about new bands some times. I know absolutely nothing about this band other than that they are from Dublin Ireland, and they play the sort of goblin vocal, snare heavy ritual occult black metal I like to listen to in those rare moments where I have the house to myself. Three main songs, with two shorter interludes, identified by roman numerals and nothing else. The interludes are piano and acoustic guitar bits that add a deeper dimension to what might otherwise be too much onslaught of 90mph diabolism. I personally am pretty into this as an End of Year List candidate. Definitely one of the best albums I've heard in May. Valais by Valais

Trumpet of Amdusias

Search This Blog