Black Metal History Month- Misotheist : "De Pinte"

Yes, there is still new Black Metal coming out of Norway, though four albums into their career, Misotheist are still new if you are comparing them to Mayhem and Burzum. There is also a fair amount of death metal aggression buried inthe cavernous darkness of their aggressive sound. The vocals bellow with a lower throaty growl. On the rawer more early second wave side of the classic equation, they balance this out with the sheer heft of their sound. To their credit, they are also not just dependent on blast beats. They can still summon a swirl of sound with this. I enjoy the opening track, so let's see if the rest of the album can hold up. 

The second song, "Blinded and Revealed," hits with a more intense punch that harnesses a more chaotic anger. It reminds me of Marduk in the straightforward manner they hit you head-on with the sonic hammering; it is not until later in the song that an eerie melody rings out within the layers of guitar. "Kjetterdom" slows things down to a more icy tension, which helps the overall dynamics of the album and gives your ears the needed break. 

The title track that closes the album is 21 minutes, and I can not think of any reason that a song needs to be that long. A great deal of the fat that needs to be trimmed is in the intro. It takes three minutes for the vocals to come in. The song moves at a slower pace that might warrant an 11 minutes if they are taking us to the intersection of funeral doom and depressive black metal. But it turns into a cavernous death metal closer to Incantation until the end of the song, when things take on a more intense darkness, cool sounds, but no reason for over twenty minutes of them. I will give this album an 8.5; it solidly puts them on my map, I wish they would focus more on songwriting, but if you want some black metal that takes from the Scandinavian roots and adds a more modern sonci intensity, this is worth your time. 

3.7

1

pst72