Black Metal History Month - Pure Wrath : "Hymn to the Woeful Hearts"

 I have already spoken on how the origin of a music's demographics effects the vibrational feeling of it. With black metal capturing darkness is key. This Indonesian project prove me right as it hits all the right notes and tries to fake you out by leaning at first more toward the melodic folk side of the genre. Perhaps that would have been a better path for it. It is not until the fourth song that I hear anything that sounds like pure wrath from an emotional standpoint. The fact this album has a really polished professional sound is good on one hand, but if this had a rawer darker mix it might have made it sound more like black metal and less like buzzing fast orchestral metal. The drumming is great because the drummer from White Ward played on this session.   

There is nothing that chills you or really makes you feel any of the ways that black metal should make you feel. Is it all played well? Yes. The midrange raspy screamed vocals are performed as they should be, but it is the feeling that should be conveyed which is where I begin to have a hard time believing what he is trying to sell me.  The dynamic range of "Footprints of a Lost Child" is more convincing. It is well arranged, and the execution is excellent, not sure the first three songs measure up as well in these regards.  "Those Who Stand Still" has enough variation that it does not just blend together and sound like the previous song, which the front end of the album is more guilty of. The blasting does get a little old a little fast.  

Things get a great deal more melodic for the title track that opens the album.  It is really more like an outro piece as this instrumental track is a wild departure from the metal that dominates the bulk of this album. It is very well done on every level expect a glaring variation from what this album normally sounds like. Overall this is well done it just does not hve the darkness or danger of black metal, I will give this album an 8.5. 

Black Metal History Month - Pure Wrath : "the Forlorn Soldier"

Giving a project not from Europe or America a chance. This one is from Indonesia. Speed is their thing. It is not the darkest thing I have heard and the symphonic elements do keep it from just being a blast fest. The vocals sound like the most blackened part of this. It kind of goes to show how black metal is more of a feeling the sound brings that just a sound the guitar buzz with tremolo so the notes are being played in a way a black metal band would execute them. The piano parts are cool and the chanted vocals work for me as well, despite feeling this just doesn't sit where I would put black metal. Lyrically this is about a genocide that occured in the 60s. So political matters take away from the darkness when it comes to the energy being places as it plants their consciousness in the physical world.

Symphonic blackened death metal might be a fair assessment. The sounds do cascade with the sweeping swathes of orchestrated synths. The drummer from White Ward , who are an actual black metal band, plays on this though the drums are fairly low in the mix. The vocals are a dry throaty rasp  higher pitched the majority of the time. Six minutes into the second song there is a melodic break of clean guitar before it explodes back into it's metallic venom. Here is one train of though about the album. I find ever your write about something you are not a personal part of there is a detachment. The fantasy lyrics of a great deal of power metal creates this detachment . None of these guys were alive in the 60s. They are just reflecting from a history book, which might as well be fantasy as history is written by the victors. Thus this detachment can be felt. How angry can you be about something that happened 60 years ago?

The songs begin to sound the same by the time we get to the last song. The chanted vocals return and there are no new elements introduced. It felt like a continuation of the previous song. Things are well played and sounds great from a production stand point, though the drums are a little lost in the mix and it could use more thunder to make it heavier.  I think they succeeded in what they set out to do here even if what they are doing is not making the greatest case for black metal not from europe. If they had committed more to the death metal side this could have been the strongest death metal album so far this year , but instead we are trying to occupy the sonic space of black metal. I will give it an 8 for all of those reasons.   This is being  released March 6th on Debemur Morti.