Firtan : "Ethos"

 

I liked the German band's 2022 album "Marter", this one finds them expanding beyond the conventions of 90s black metal that colored the last album, building darker more melodic tapestries of sound that also embrace the rage of a storm. The two qualities work together well on the opening track. If you regularly read this blog then you are aware of my love for Black Metal, but my unwillingness to accept just your typical blast beats and tremolo picking as those have been done to death, and there are other ways to capture the same feel which is what is happening here, though the drummer lays on the double bass to achieve this. Is it at times death metal adjacent? In some ways yeah, but the sonic depth of the guitars captures more than just the blood-red hyper-aggression of death metal. This also means the riffing is catchier than your average black metal band which just rides the tension.

"Contra Vermes" does find some of the more commonplace weapons of black metal coming into play.     Blast beats and a dissonant throb are two of those sounds. The vocals are more vengefully screamed.  While they execute this well the grinding riffs are not the most original moment, so your ears are grateful for the atmospheric reprieves the song offers. "Arikanum" gives you more breathing room by granting time to bask in the ambiance as they create a darker tone. The violin really contributes a great deal of melody to this album. It provides the needed counterpoint to the moment they succumb to the feral nature of black metal. "Wermut hoch am Firmament" works off of this with the buzz of tremolo-picked guitars at its core. There are enough accents to give the vocals a purpose. "Moloch' thrashes at you with renewed anger. The vocals might be possessed by an even more scathing rasp than the previous song. 

"Ruakh' is more deliberate in its attack, though not mellower as pummelling double bass races it forward. The last track is more of a melodic outro, which are elements I would have preferred to have heard worked into some of the actual songs, leaving the last real song as a suitable closing for this album as it locks in with a deliberate chug to end things more heavily.  I will give this album a 9, it's heavy and does conform to some of the black metal tropes but they still care about songwriting rather than just hitting you with rage set to blast beasts in a blurred wall of sound. 

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