Nevoa : "Re Un"

The atmospheric black metal duo from Portugal that brought the masterful "Absence of Void' are back with a darker and denser offering this time around. In the last minute bellowing vocals come in after they have ridden a droning groove for the bulk of the song. There is a cleaner and more jangling guitar tone to the second song. Around the two minute mark it begins to gain speed. These songs are looser jams than what they gave us on the first album. When the vocals come back in to help build things to more of a boiling point , the guitar gets weirder and then they continue to ebb back and forth like a breeze between roaring thunder storms. This album is much more progressive than the first. This is both a blessing and a curse as it does push their brand of black metal into new places, but the songs are not as focused. At the eight minute mark when things break down into just white noise it makes me wonder if perhaps a more thoughtful ending could have been planned.

"Conflict" is more direct. It is under five minutes while possessing plenty of sonic texture it holds the kind of heaviness that you can get lost in. At the three minute mark that let loose the blast beats and they are effective because they have not been pounding at you with them for the whole album. The album fittingly ends with the song "Closure" which is more atmospheric. There is a very slow build into the heavier pound that precedes the screamed vocal, which is rawer and angrier in it's delivery that what I remember from the first album. There is more of a doom pacing up until it swells into a more sonic ringing of guitar.

This album has me at a strange place with it. On their first album I like the familiar yet fresh take on black metal, here they are wandering away from black metal and this is a jammy sludge hybrid with black metal influence.So here is where I have to accept where this band is going versus what I want them to be which is a moment frozen in time. They are no longer black metal in it's purest form , but still allow their black metal past to influence their evolution, I'll give it a 9 and see how it sits with me for the rest of the year, I don't think it's as original of a sound as their album was as a whole before as the guitar sound was so different from other black metal, this has a organic tone, but more like one I have heard other bands use, so it's a little bit of a quandary for me.