The most interesting releases of the week!
1349 has released engaging black metal for decades, from the early days of albums like Beyond The Apocalypse to The Infernal Pathway. The Wolf & The King, released on Season of Mist, shows no signs of change. This band’s music contains vicious black metal riffs, backed up with clever songwriting tricks and some truly chant-able vocals.
On opening track “The God Devourer,” 1349 alternate straightforward pummeling with use of syncopation to create a sense of floating in space. They do this without losing any of their momentum or the edge that shows this band’s lineage in Norwegian black metal. I don’t hate the straight-forward, time-filling chugs on The Wolf & The King as much as I do elsewhere because those moments serve as set-up for the pauses, syncopations, and climaxes instead of as a half-assed attempt at writing music. Combine with great performances and impressive solos, and you have another excellent release from some of the masters of the genre.
Muuntautuja was released on Nuclear Blast, but that’s the most normal, grounded fact about it. While 1349 play punch-you-in-the-mouth black metal, Oranssi Pazuzu also seem like they’re bending space and time to their will. I’ve always grouped this band more with the weird brand of metal such as Maudlin Of The Well/Kayo Dot than with other black metal groups due to how much they stretch their sound without seeming to care about genre conventions. But Muutautuja isn’t some roadside spectacle to check out because it’s weird. This is engaging music that’s as entertaining as it is crunchy.
You don’t have to delve into the weirdness to enjoy Oranssi Pazuzu. I’ve been putting this album on while at the gym or dredging through emails for the experience and had a great time just letting it wash over me. But this record rewards you for paying attention to the details. Muutautuja achieve a sense of other-worldliness partially by letting their guitars shift to the background and letting the bass and effects take the helm. These effects plow through your typical concepts of riffs, but often maintain song structures that metal fans expect. The result is something that sounds graspable, but slightly wrong in a good way.
You might know Leila Abdul-Rauf better as the guitarist and singer from Vastum, but you will be wildly disappointed if you go into this expecting death metal. Calls From A Seething Edge consists of dark ambient, folk, and industrial sounds, and ends up sounding like a mix of Bitches Brew and Myrkur‘s Folkensange. This music lingers on and twists through haunting vocal harmonies, viola solos, and quiet sounds from just around the corner at dusk.
There’s enough happening on this album that I can’t really call it minimalist, but at any given moment there may be nothing more than an acoustic guitar solo that fades into just a low backing drone, or ambient noise that leads into a singular vocal or string line. So while the instrumentation calls to a full and bursting world, the songwriting remains sharp and focused to a degree that would be frustrating if it wasn’t so engaging. Calls From A Seething Edge is the best album of the week, and that feels like it undersells it. Calls From A Seething Edge is music that you think about for a long time afterwards when walking alone or when other music fades away, not really sure why, but unable to deny the album’s effectiveness.
Weight Of The World is Alias Noone‘s debut full-length, released on Inverse Records. The band plays mid-paced melodeath, following the style of bands like Insomnium or the softer side of Dark Tranquility, complete with clean vocals cutting through the mist when a particularly poignant feeling is needed. The production on Weight Of The World adds some depth to the record, with pounding drums sounding like they’re in the distance, beating away when the growls or clean chants come through a large open space. The band’s biggest songwriting strength is their ability to write a catchy melody. At times the music drags while it’s waiting for the next big moment, but the sharper tracks are able to maintain a high level of engagement through interesting and memorable guitar lines, even down to the chugs.
Alias Noone sound big. They write melodies that build on top of the previous melodies, vocals that are designed to lead to a satisfying chorus, and bass that adds dimension and flavor that the other instruments can’t provide. Weight Of The World isn’t a new experience, but this music taps into every reason that this style has been successful and copied for decades.
