This Black Metal band from Portugal is following up on their 2022 album "Mirage" which fostered ambitions to break away from the confines of black metal. This album follows a similar path though with bigger production and more melodic climaxes. Two songs into the album and they have already covered more ground sonically. Being more deliberate in the riffing certainly helps as well. The guitars allow for more space which breeds darker intentions, allowing for more nuance in the songwriting process. This lends itself to creating an almost more Behemoth-like mood to songs like "Suspended". However, they are more open to offsetting the atmosphere with a more vengeful blasting than what Behemoth ventures into.
The atmosphere on this album is handled differently than on their last album as it never feels like they are coming from a similar zip-code as Deafheaven. It occurs in the more soaring melodies the guitar riffs bang out with broader intentions. On the title track, I detect an almost metalcore-like stomping raging beneath the pulse of the drums. This and other moments make this album more accessible to a broader metal audience than just the black metal crowd. "Wilted Flower" blasts with more of a straightforward black metal fury that still has enough songwriting smarts dialed into it with the needed nuance to balance things out. They are not trying to be Sleep Token with the sparse sung vocals that crop up, and perhaps the less-than-poppy use of them is what makes this album hit a hundred times harder than anything Sleep Token as aspired to do.
"Reborn' locks into the triumphant gallop mode of Black Metal. Blast beats carry it off into the wild abandon expected of black metal. 'Shapeshifter' starts off as darker and moodier before the blast beats return to rush it into a blurred battery of the sense, where the cool melody is not only an undercurrent. Still, this is more than what your average black metal band does these days. "Unknown" once again finds the band leaning into blast beats, though as the song progresses they are broken up by accents, and the drummer does enough to keep the album from just becoming a blur despite not shying from blast beats. Some punches bring that more hard-core feel back to mind. They maintain this momentum going into the last song, which finds the final three songs, carrying a more uniform energy despite their ebb and flow. I will give this album a 9, as it improves on the path they blazed on their last album. This album is being released on Season of Mist on October 25th, if the world lasts that long.
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