Black Metal History Month - VALAIS -"s/t"

Here is a curious case. This project from Ireland released this album last year on Bandcamp, then they got signed to Signal Rex for the actual physical release. It is black metal history month, so the history of this album online does not make it any less vital of a 2022 release. It is only an ep, 37 minutes of music so still longer than "Regin in Blood".   I often lament about bands focusing on a sound rather than songs. This project manages to do both, but they have also managed to make the sound they created to throb with an unsettling darkness that is in and of its self-attention grabbing. While I say that now, I hope this does not mean that for the remainder of the album, this is all they do. 

I can understand why they are compared to Leviathan but hear something that is unique to who they are while they follow down that path to madness. The second song, throbs with a malice more closely aligned with what you expect from black metal as long as you are not expecting black metal to just be blast beats. They do go into blast beats for the last song which is a sprawling almost 14-minute journey into the abyss. The second song that is a song and not the interludes which for the purpose of this review I am not giving much thought to as they feel like they are just parts of the songs they bookend.  They second song has a weird girl's voice panned in there, it might have been my meds playing tricks on me, but there was some spooky shit going on there.  

The production is very interesting there is a rawer more lo-fi sound to the crescendo of the last song. The first song is smooth in the darkness and some of the sounds are crisper than others. It is very organic, and I think a fresh take on the Cvlt sound though the bulk of this album the focus is more on the eerie darkness being summoned here.  When I reviewed Watain's new album I declared it was the bar that had been raised for black metal to measure up this year. There are things these guys do that is different than Watain, the bass tone has more thump. They are more experimental, but not as polished or melodic as Watain.  For this reason, they are a 9.5, as it still works great and is worth repeat listens, highly reccomended if you seek darkness