Style: atmospheric black metal, progressive black metal (mixed vocals, mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Wolves in the Throne Room, Panopticon, Kaatayra, Mare Cognitum
Country: Brazil
Release date: 9 May 2025

An artist’s first few albums can only be compared against the greater canon. For an artist like Vauruvã’s Caio Lemos (Kaatayra, Bríi, et al.) who has twenty albums under his belt, though, evaluating a new album against his own oeuvre is the natural thing to do. Further, his style is entirely peerless (after his first two more straightforward atmoblack releases), a signature sound permeating any genre he’s attempted—from his trance-infused black metal (Bríi) and dungeon synth (Bakt) to darkwave (Rasha) and a return to atmoblack (Vestígio). So how does Mar de Deriva stack up against Caio Lemos’ extensive discography?

At first, Vauruvã was an improvisatory project from Lemos with vocalist Bruno Augusto Ribeiro, melding traditional black metal with the Caio Lemos Touch— since metal and improvisation rarely go together, it’s certainly an interesting experiment. However, the first two albums under Vauruvã were among the bottom of Lemos’ releases in quality, slightly underwhelming due to their emphasis on pure black metal. Mar de Deriva drops the improv aspect of prior Vauruvã albums and instead approaches the average sound of all Lemos projects. I hear touches of Kaatayra, Bríi, and especially Vestígio here. The loss of Vauruvã’s distinct identity among Lemos’ various projects is a tad disappointing—I’d love to see how far improvisation could be pushed in black metal—but Mar de Deriva is all the better for it, easily Vauruvã’s strongest album to date.

Structured as a triptych, much like his 2023 album Vestígios, Mar de Deriva glides between ideas seamlessly whilst growing in intensity from movement to movement. The three tracks flow together as if a part of one larger epic, although they all follow an identical, predictable structure: a slow, folky start building into ripping black metal riffs, concluded by an eerily calm resolution. Mar de Deriva’s ebbs and flows are natural, and listening to the release is like drifting through a surreal dream—even the harsh vocals and distorted guitars merely add a hazy layer atop the free-flowing hallucination. 

Mar de Deriva has moments with the most ominous gravitas of Lemos’ career thus far, such as in the beginning of the album’s closer “As Selvas Vermelhas No Planeta dos Eminentes,” which is backboned by dramatic percussion and darkly cinematic synths. But contrasted with the obscured darkness are moments of extreme levity, full of illusive ethereality. After the initial riff-centered section to start “Os Caçadores,” for instance, the track pauses before erupting in a barrage of blast beats and harsh vocals over a tranquil synth motif. The ending of that track is almost uncanny with its subdued beauty, full of atmospheric synth, clean vocalizations, arpeggiated acoustic guitars, and bird chirping—how can music sound so peaceful and comforting yet strangely detached? Lemos blessedly utilizes his acoustic guitar playing at several points in the project, too, with the highlight coming in the final few minutes of “As Selvas Vermelhas No Planeta dos Eminentes”; the section is reminiscent of his magnum opus Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à Sua Direita Sabe with its trem-picked arpeggios acting in harmony with the energetic rhythm. 

While Mar de Deriva features many of Lemos’ greatest individual riffs, his playing on opener “Legado” comes across as slightly sloppy; it doesn’t detract from the liminal dreaminess of the track, but the tighter guitar performance on the next two tracks is stronger. Lemos uses every trick from his extensive discography, but he underutilizes some of my favorites on Mar de Derica, particularly his ever-improving clean vocals. His lulling incantations are a soothing counter to his shrieky harshes and complement his synth tones.

Minor quibbles aside, Caio Lemos has delivered. Mar de Deriva is a wonderful record, its atmosphere utterly sublime. Vauruvã mixes stormy black metal sections with rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds, and the listener floats along in the dreams Lemos creates. So, although this record isn’t quite a crowning gem for Lemos at this stage in his career, its diaphanous beauty through searing riffs successfully combines some of the best traits across his body of work to an indisputably excellent result. There is no other artist like Caio Lemos—no artist who drops masterpieces seemingly at will. This is yet another.

Recommended tracks: Os Caçadores, As Selvas Vermelhas No Planeta dos Eminentes
You may also like: Bríi, Negura Bunget, Vestígio, Salqiu
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: independent

Vauruvã is:
– Caio Lemos (instruments)
– Bruno Augusto Ribeiro (vocals)

The post Review: Vauruvã – Mar de Deriva appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: folk black metal, progressive black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Panopticon, Agalloch, Primordial, Wolves in the Throne Room
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 7 February 2025

Romanticism breeds nationalism. The Romantic focus on emotion, individualism, and mysticism directly fomented a sense of collective cultural heritage to form the basis of the nation as we know it. I have long argued that black metal is a form of modern Romanticism (although that take is certainly not unique to me), and, thus, it is clearer why folk music and black metal have such a synergistic fusion. Black metal’s philosophy centers around individualism, yes, but also around pride for one’s cultural and national identity: if you look at any but the most remote corners of the globe, there will be a black metal band, and the odds are if they aren’t mediocre second-wave worship, they somehow inject their local music traditions into their sound. Black metal functions as a template for folk music of any kind to be amplified, indiscriminate and accessible. If we turn to Scotland, the nation’s traditions cry of bagpipes and of whistles, and on Andy Marshall’s sixth album over a decade into his career as Saor, the sounds of the Scots mix with stunning atmospheric black metal to become the Caledonian black metal band. 

Each track on Amidst the Ruins is a meandering journey, covering Lowlands and Highlands, isles and farmland. Apart from the folk piece “The Sylvan Embrace,” the songs all top the 11:30 mark, and they fly by despite their length. Saor’s had a consistent formula for songwriting that’s worked since 2013, and he hasn’t changed it much this time—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Three of the four black metal tracks begin with a similar deluge of tremeloes and blast beats, exploding in vibrant sylvan shades of green. Underpinning the triumphant black metal and the oft Celtic guitar melodies is resonant bass and, this time around, a full string trio of violin, viola, and cello. The metallic core of Amidst the Ruins is epic and melodic, but the true magic happens in the perennial shifts from tumbling black metal to Caledonian folk music—or similarly when the guitar trades off from the lead melody, allowing the tin whistle, low whistle, or Uilleann pipes to conduct the song. Those moments constitute the hallmark of Saor’s sound, and all four tracks are chock full of them.

Lyrically, Amidst the Ruins is a tale of hope, of rising from the ashes and rebuilding. Performed through a mix of standard melodic black metal rasps—I think a good touchstone is Malo Civelli of Cân Bardd—with powerfully belted clean, often dueted, choruses, the message of Amidst the Ruins is powerful, and the music’s swelling climaxes and fatherland aesthetics complement the defiance in the face of ruin. Saor aren’t afraid to get pensive, though, and the extended neofolk track “The Sylvan Embrace” is heartfelt and much moodier than the surrounding metal’s saccharine chord progressions and sweet sweet melodies. Featuring whispered vocals, cello, and gentle acoustic guitars that scream “Agalloch!,” the song is essential to Amidst the Ruins, and I almost wish it were up one more spot in the tracklist to bisect the album since the four black metal tracks all play to a similar mood.  

While the pastoral epics like bookending tracks “Amidst the Ruins” and “Rebirth” are thoughtfully composed, stunning, and easy to listen to, I have to mention that the Caledonian aesthetic isn’t as fundamental to the sound as it is to the band’s identity. Rather than incorporating traditional Scottish melodies and technique into the composition itself, it’s superimposed onto a folk black metal blueprint (a damn good one, at least). If I changed the whistles and pipes to bluegrass, I’d have middle-era Panopticon; to dungeon-synthy keys and flutes I’d get Summoning; and to a more simple, sparse woodsiness, I’d have a great Cascadian black metal band. Andy Marshall is an excellent composer and neither gimmicky nor derivative, but I long for a deeper Scottish-ness to the music: Amidst the Ruins is top-shelf atmospheric black metal with entertaining folk inclusions, but for a band positioning itself as so steeped in tradition, I’d like to see that as a more integral part of the sound from the very beginning of the process.

At this point, Saor are a folk black metal institution, and you know each new album will be quality stuff, the winding, progressive tracks easy to get swept away in. Although not the most ground-breaking release in his catalog, Saor’s sixth album is magnificent and foreboding. Amidst the Ruins is so wonderfully evocative with its musical storytelling even the English will find something to love here.

Recommended tracks: Amidst the Ruins, The Sylvan Embrace, Rebirth
You may also like: Gallowbraid, Cân Bardd, Thrawsunblat, Fellwarden
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Season of Mist – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Saor is:
Andy Marshall (everything)
Ella Zlotos – Female Vocals, Tin Whistles, Low Whistles, Uilleann Pipes
Carlos Vivas – Drums
Jo Quail – Cello & FX on “The Sylvan Embrace”
Àngela Moya Serrat – Violin on “Amidst the Ruins”, “Echoes of the Ancient Land” & “Rebirth”
Miguel Izquierdo – Viola on “Amidst the Ruins”, “Echoes of the Ancient Land” & “Rebirth”
Samuel C. Ledesma – Cello on “Amidst the Ruins”, “Echoes of the Ancient Land” & “Rebirth”

The post Review: Saor – Amidst the Ruins appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: folk black metal, atmospheric black metal, trance, drum’n’bass, jungle (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Kaatayra, Fishmans (Long Season)
Country: Brazil
Release date: 11 October 2024

October 11th 2024 was a big day for me. My girlfriend and I got up bright and early to travel four hundred miles to see Opeth live. Two hours before the show, however, I got an email from Bandcamp that Caio Lemos’ solo project Bríi had released his next album Camaradagem Póstuma with his usual lack of prior announcement. That I didn’t know if I was more excited for an Opeth concert or the newest album from Lemos should say enough about how much I love Bríi’s music. Halfway through the decade, and each year a Lemos project—Bríi, Kaatayra, and Vestígio—has been at or near the top of my end-of-year list. At this point, dangling this paragraph with some rhetorical “it can’t possibly live up to expectations, can it?!” is a sleight to your intelligence: we all know Camaradagem Póstuma is another masterpiece. 

Bríi has the distinct Caio Lemos sound—a vitalistic rhythmic pulse, blackened rasps, magical, tropical synths—yet like with every new iteration, the beast has evolved, incorporating new and refined elements into the formulae of previous projects. Like last year’s (disappointing) Último Ancestral Comum, Camaradagem is transitory and fuzzy, as if recorded from a dream. There’s an evanescent detachment that’s charming and intriguing but also profoundly eerie, compounded with the vocals being produced almost as if they were ghosts in the background. The rasps are delicate, quietly buried in the mix, and the recorded screams that start the album on “Médium” are haunting. On the other hand, the clean vocals, although uncommon in Camaradagem’s thirty minute runtime, showcase one of Serafim’s¹ greatest improvements, with his voice much more rich and assured.

As always on a Lemos project, rhythm is king, and on Camaradagem Póstuma it primarily functions in the nebulous space between jungle and drum’n’bass, Serafim’s obsession with percussion manifested in the intricately syncopated breakbeats of electronic music. He continually exchanges the breakbeats for blast beats with transitions so smooth there’s hardly a noticeable change in the percussive brilliance, and he makes the combination seem so natural it’s hard to believe that other artists don’t do it more. Alternating between these two modes—ephemerally coalescing and diverging in complex rhythmic dynamics—Bríi finds an electrifying groove early on in opener “Médium” and builds the album outward from it, as he did on my 2022 album of the year, Corpos Transparentes. Even though the drumming seems cyclically repetitive, Serafim almost always mixes each variation up—the frighteningly complex cymbal patterns, which beat is rhythmically accented, or even the inclusion of little easter eggs like the Amen break at the end of “Aparecidos.” 

From the illusion of hypnotic repetition, the album’s melodic contours blossom into a near limitless diversity of musical texture. First, various synths flower underneath the drums like perennials, continually and ephemerally blooming and wilting. Guitars dazzle in brief leads (4:21 “Médium,” 4:07 “Aparecidos,” and the riffs throughout “Baile Fantasma”), breathy flutes dance (5:00 “Médium”), and synthesized choirs (“Enlutados” opening²) create breathtakingly surreal atmospheres. The only track which doesn’t excel at creatively evolving is penultimate and shortest song, “Entre Mundos,” which stagnates in the same jungle/DnB beat throughout. However, the best melodic embellishment throughout Camaradagem Póstuma is undoubtedly the acoustic guitar parts which are a direct callback to my 2020 album of the year and fully acoustic black metal album Só Quem Viu o Relâmpago à Sua Direita Sabe. The trem-picked acoustic is a unique sound, vibrant but frail, as if it could collapse in on itself at any moment. 

Nobody else could craft an album quite like Camaradagem Póstuma. This seamless mix between acoustic guitar, enveloping black metal, and atmospheric rave music just works; it’s Caio Lemos’ magic. The hypnagogic black metal is unsettling yet comforting, surprising yet instinctive, low-key yet sublime. You’ll see this on my list as is annual tradition.

Recommended tracks: Médium, Aparecidos, Baile Fantasma
You may also like: Bakt, Déhà, Vauruvã, Rasha, Wreche, Plague Orphan, Oksät, Vestígio
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Bríi is:
– Serafim (everything)

1. The pseudonym Lemos uses as instrumentalist and vocalist for the Bríi project on Bandcamp ︎
2.  Which, fun fact, is the exact same choir synth that Mechina uses lol ︎

The post Missed album: Bríi – Camaradagem Póstuma appeared first on The Progressive Subway.