False : "Portent"

The second full length from a band with black metal aspirations out of Minnesota. And area cold enough to capture the mood the music was meant for. This album has a great deal of hype behind it as their female singer gave the more politically correct hipsters something to get behind, despite black metal now being not as favored among hipsters , but more prominent in metal as a whole,. Is the hype warranted for surely this is going to be on a great deal of end of the year best of lists since it is an album that is supposed to be their if you are a thinking mans millennial metal connoisseur. This band falls into the same trap many other bands have of late. The album sounds good. All the sound are dialed in from a production stand point even to the point that on sound alone they certainly sound legit. The problem however being less emphasis on song writing despite the bulk of the albums consists of three songs all over the ten minute mark.

The second song might be darker than the first , but if I had not glanced up to look at the screen I would have assumed it was all the same song. So the dynamic range of what they do is not great. Lots of blast beat. The play chords that should carry and icy sound, but I am not feeling any darkness coming from the intent within these songs. Instead I hear the right notes being played with not a great deal of conviction of hatred behind them,Where they have improved on some level is the prominence of keyboards that help add shadows to the mood. "the Serpent Sting, the Smell of Goat' is a great song title. Letting up on the blasty beast and allowing the song to breath is their best idea yet.  It allows you to hear that the drummer is great. The bassist is also not slouch. The guitars play it rather safe though. There is a little more variance of emotion in her snarl here, but the vocal are the weak link of the album as she is a one trick pony.  This makes all the songs sound even more similar. Five minutes into this one and I can not imagine any justification for dragging it on another 11 minutes.Five minutes later things break up for a bit and it sounds like they are jamming over a more epic atmospheric section with more interesting guitar riffs.

If you are fine with settling with a 2019 take on the second wave of black metal that sounds good , but not much in the way of song writing then you might find this album growing on you. If you aske more from black metal and need to feel it invoke hatred and darkness these guys might sound like their name and prove to be poseurs.  I will give this album a 7.5. It doesn't suck and if you are already a fan then you will like this. If you are tired of the same old same old, then you might not be as impressed.

.

Maeth : " Shrouded Mountain"

I went into this thinking these guys were a doom band. This might have colored my first impression of this band was that they had a Jesu like thing going on with the layered vocals. So I was a little caught off guard by the math metal that would eventually dominate this song. The vocals shift into more of a death metal growl. When you get into the second song the flute solo that has been wandering over everything begins to annoy me, which is unfortunate as the chords under neath it take on a more hypnotic and exotic blend. They rifss build into some more angular, but with solid groove wedged into the craziness that reminds me at this point more of Cynic.

The first of the two songs that clock in at over ten minutes is called "Shrouded". This one only breaks the ten minute mark by sixteen seconds. This is time that was wasted in the first two minutes for them to actually get into the real song and not just play around like they are tuning their instruments. Even when the effects heavy guitars do swell up, they still manage to keep wasting time. When it begins to seem like a reall song is about to take form it's some kind of folk influence post-rock. It does build in intensity, but still feels like more of an interlude.

"Naga" could be the intro to a Dream Theater song. Though no Journey like vocals come in and they do not bust into something that is more of a power ballad. In the end it's about as eventful as most instrumentals that are not vehicles for guitar solos. The vocals return for the last and longest song of the album. The come back as a low multi-tracked growl. The chug is slow and powerful, but more sludge than doom. The vocals stay low in the mix as this song eventually swells into something that sounds more like a post-rock version of Tool. These guys are talented , I think the first couple of songs key into where their sound should go, I'll give this a 6.5.

False : "Untitled"

I have been hunting for this album for a few months now. It was being hailed as been the best American black metal album of the year and it very well may be just due to the fact there is not much worthwhile black metal coming out of the states this year. On the very song the vocals didn't sit well with me .They don't sound screamed as much as they sound like someone if gasping for breath really up close on the microphone there is no power at all to them. So when I find out they have a girl singing for them the lack of power and gasping for air makes sense. The guitar tone and keyboards sound well layered and the grit to the guitar has their own sound. The drumming sounds a little thin, like the drummer is barely touching his kit with his sticks.There is one part where they lock in for more of a galloping chug that works well. But the album is going to need to pull it together to impress me as from the first song I am underwhelmed.

 Harsh vocals in any genre might not be sung, but they do need to serve the song. Here the vocals are not placed anywhere. They seem to have not thought put into them in regards of how they should work in the context of the rest of the song. The guitars have some little punches on "the Deluge" but are not really weaving together much in terms of songwriting. This is not to say they aren't working hard to try and do this , its just not happening. The cool riffs alone don't make a good song theory is in full effect. The synths on this song remind me of how the keyboards accent "Altars of Madness".

There is a tighter attack to the title track, the vocals actually work with the song, so I am not sure what they were doing the first two songs. When she rasps the word master it reminds me of Gullom. Her lyrics are just intelligible enough to create goofy misunderstandings, at one point it sounds like she says "the master is a gnome". Yet even at its best this album doesn't seize you attention and I still find myself tuning it out.They get off to a good start on "Entropy". In the final six minutes they touch on a melodic section that shows promise. It's sections like these they need to expand up in order to propel their song writing towards awesome.

"Hedgecraft" really has its work cut out for it if it is going to tip this album towards being decent.They go full blast ahead and the vocal work better with the music than earlier in the album. One of their strengths that they displayed earlier in the album where they lock into a chug resurfaces here. Her vocals have a more convincing snarl to them as well. Earlier Nachtmystium might be a good point of reference to some of their more grooving sections. Their attack is More one dimensional than not, which is ok unless this is taking place in a song that is over ten minutes long. They hold off yet again to introduce any melodic elements until the final few minutes and even those are short lived when they give way to blasting. The hype is almost heavier than this album. Sure it's a novelty to have a girl singing in your black metal band, but who really care if she can barely hack it . This album is not a good argument for women being equals when it comes to playing metal. Or maybe it is cause the drummer is a guy and almost on part with her. The guitar sound is pretty mean, so if that is all it takes to sell you on a band then you are in luck, they do have some moments and have promise, enough promise that I'll round this up to a 7.5, but if this is on someone's album of the year list hold them suspect for being false.

Obsequiae : " Aria of Vernal Tombs"

While vikings live in Minnesota it's not the first place I would think a project like this might come from. Here is an interesting bit of folk metal, that is trying to not be folk metal. I like the distant re verb drenched black metal vocals. 20-Buck Spin is pretty reliable so just because I said folk-metal doesn't mean this is any way like Trollfest, aside that it's metal. "Until Ages Fall" keeps things swinging along the same ground the first song did though it might have a more melodic edge to it's festivities. The guitars do a good job of play the same intervals a fiddle would. The acoustic passages are well played they break things up in a manner similar to what Agalloch used to do in some sense, just without the cleanly sung sections.The interludes almost outnumber the actual songs. They go for some blasting on "Pools of a Vernal Paradise". I like the tempo the vocals take to work with the epic  baroque march of the music.

This is how folk metal should go down, even though it gets a little happier as they dance around the forest on "Aniace and Heart". These more period inspired sections are off set by the heavier nature of the drums and vocals. There is much more attack to "In the Absence of Light". The guitar still has room to twiddle with their melodic single note melodies, even more so when it hits the blasty part which , kind feels like they are taking the easy way out after we have already heard them tackle songs with a more air tight artistry than just settling for what all the metal bands are doing. The album does begin to evolve into a heavier affair as it progress and the baroque melodies just happen to be layered around the metal rather than the other way around. The guitars continue to weave their majick around the assault until the blast beats come and give a more hurried feel to the song.

There is more of a classic metal feel combined with Summoning or Bathory on the closing song. The chorus even has a hook to it. The songs are very economic. They get credit for not becoming overly grandiose and turning these into fourteen minute sagas, while still retaining the expansive feel this music requires in the same way it helps to watch the Lord of the Rings movies on a large screen. This is first and foremost a guitar players album. If you play guitar and have any interest in folk metal then you would be doing yourself a disservice not to listen to this album. I'll give this one a 9. It's easy on the ears. Not sure how much actual play time this will get from me, but it's so well done