Tryglav is back with new full length opus, first in four years, second in all. This project is named after a mountain in Slovenia, also after three headed Slavic deity, but the mountain is a bit differently pronounced. This is an entity from my home country, Croatia, brain spawn of one Boris Behara and it is fantastic. This opus offers seven songs of melodic yet aggressive black metal. When I listen to this opus, it feels like I am in some ruins fort on a dark night at the mountain, with wind blowing in my faces and bones, at the same time being alone, yet not alone. Guitar melodies and work are awesome, creating such melancholy and emotionally filled soundscape combining it with blast beat drums, but also with some more calmer and mid tempo atmospheric parts, though thrash influenced drumming rears its head too. Vocals are screaming, but you can understand most of what is being sung, with lyrics in English language. This opus can easily concur for one of the best melodic black metal releases of the year. My personal favorites: ‘The Plague’, ‘The Vengeance’.
Deviser are Greek black metal band with roots going back to 1989. That means over three decades of metal and much respect for keeping the black flame alive all these decades. This is their new opus containing ten songs and it is their fifth full length in all, first one in last twelve years. I am always fascinated how Greek black metal scene sounded and still sounds different than their northern Europe mates, being more melodic and warmer so to say than the rest, yet still retaining the melancholy mixed with aggression not necessary delivering speed blast beats but quite the contrary through mid tempo songs, like Deviser has, choir parts, clever mixture of guitar aggression and melodies, synth backgrounds adding to the atmosphere and drama with occasional excursion into some faster parts of the black metal songwriting. This band sounds like Greek bm sound of the nineties with Rotting Christ and Necromantia immediately coming to mind, but it is not a copy or a clone, quite the contrary this aforementioned bands contemporary so it is nice to hear this music played that way so many years later. My personal favorites are ‘Absence of Heaven’, ‘Where Angels Fear to Thread’ featuring guest performance by Heljarmadr of Dark Funeral/Gra fame, also ‘When the Lights Went Out’ featuring guest performance of Efthimis Karadimas of Nightfall fame. Great melodic black metal album.
Finland’s …And Oceans have a new full length opus out with Season of Mist. I was so glad when they released their new come back opus called ‘Cosmic World Mother’ back in 2020. Although there were some line-up changes through the years, this didn’t stop …And Oceans. They were very interesting band to me back in the day because they mixed industrial with symphonic black metal and it worked excellently. Then they changed name, line-up but they returned and new vocalist Mathias Lillmåns, known also as singer for Finntroll delivered new power with his strong voice capable of black metal screaming, angry growling to some spoken word and clean singing. This new batch of songs are concentrated more on melodic and symphonic black metal, not unlike Old Man’s Child in some segments of the songwriting or maybe even Dimmu back in their early and best days. Lyrics deal with more deep introspective and philosophical side of darkness in man and universe. This also means strong synth melodies and symphonic arrangements, guitar work which connects old school aggressive black metal riffing with melodies and melancholic hooks only Finnish bands are capable of making. Add to this phenomenal drumming from blasts to changes of tempo to emphasize the strength of material. This is sympho black melodic par excellence. My personal favorites on this record are: ‘As in Gardens, So in Tombs’, ‘Within Fire and Crystal’ and epic ‘Ambivalent God’.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 