Vorde: s/t

Fallen Empire hasn't led me wrong yet ,so lets see if they can keep up the streak.Vorde features members of Fell Voices and Ruin Lust. The album opens with dark ambiance an element commonly found with projects on the label's roster. After three minutes of this they launch into some fairly straight forward black metal, until the vocals come in. They are a distant gurgled moan that hovers over the faster riff. It sometimes raises into something closer to singing, though the vocalist has the ability to accent it with a punchy rasp. The drumming spirals around this in a pretty impressive display. There is a slight chaotic element to how these elements are all set against one another but it adds to the overall sonic density.

This is followed up by the more metal delivery of "Transformations of the Vessel". They blast ahead while the moans bellow out in the icy backdrop. "Blood Moon" is a mix of ambiance and storming drums before it builds into a more blasting burst of black metal. The first lyric cuts through the din as "my final whisper". The more metal attack that this swells into gives some meat to the sonic explorations. This is clearly one of those albums that is going to take several listens to digest .

If it hadn't already the use of clean vocals set against the dissonance and airy bleakness of what is being called forth here reminds me of Urfaust. The vocals are more long the lines of something Attila would do or even Atriarch, where the singer from  Urfaust had slightly more command to his vocal tone. The dynamic and clean guitar tones are some of the band's strong points , they way the pursue some of the more hypnotic qualities of black metal to drone into is where you here the Fell Voices among them.This is really well executed in "Crown of Black Flame". The echoing cavern that Fell Voices records in must have been used for this album as well.

The album closes out with "Funereal Vortex" that starts off on a similar left hand path as Mayhem might and then winds up in a more atmospheric almost Cure like place in the final two minutes. So that is quiet a dynamic journey. I'm not done soaking all of this in, but think this should get a 9.It uphold Fallen Empires track record and is a bold stab at a different take on black metal that I can appreciate. A dramatic step out of the comfort zone of all the players involved, who captured some great sounds here, some of which will be familiar to fans of their respective bands ,but darker and more melodic.