Style: Post-metal, post-black metal, blackgaze
Recommended for fans of: Messa, Oceans of Slumber, Suldusk
Country: Norway
Release date: 23 May 2025

There are, it seems, two kinds of post-metal, which can be neatly divided into the kind that bores me and the kind that interests me. The genre inherited the entrenched ideal of build and crescendo that defines much of the more uninteresting post-rock out there—Mogwai to Pelican, Explosions in the Sky to Amenra—centering a compositional conceit over giving the music a sense of purpose beyond its structure. On the other hand, you’ve got the more dynamic post- acts who dare to insert outside influences and build on the genre’s foundational precepts to create something more, which is how we get to the likes of Talk Talk to Bruit ≤, The Ocean to M​ú​r. Notions of genre purity are unnecessarily limiting, the post- genres are better when they get weird with it.

Fortunately, on debut Man Under Erasure, Norwegian quintet Feversea are melding post-metal and post-black influences with occasional hints of sludge and doom. Led by the airy, haunting vocals of Ada Lønne Emberland, the band sit firmly between the lighter blackened stylings of Suldusk, the creative post-metal of Messa, and the melodic doomy leanings of Oceans of Slumber. Thick riffs vie with blackened tremolo while occasional blast beats and banshee screams cut through the languid clean vocals that dominate throughout.

After a quick introductory track featuring whispered male vocals over an arpeggiated synth motif, “Murmur Within the Skull of God” gets the ball rolling with a blackened sludgy riff that forms an indefatigable foundation for Emberland’s almost disdainful delivery, the track eventually capitulating to blast beats and screams. “New Creatures Replace Our Names” follows that same structural pattern, with an intense blackened mid-section after a delicious slow-build and a compelling ascending riff, but the rest of the song is rooted in a more doomy milieu reminiscent of Oceans of Slumber. This is the general formula of Man Under Erasure, by no means adhered to rigidly, but representative of the record’s tenor.

The problem with a lot of emergent post-metal bands is their lack of dynamism, a willingness to trudge along at the same tempo for fifty minutes. Thankfully, Feversea’s wider range of influences get the metronome working overtime, as with the fevered blackened punk of “Until it Goes Away” which, its energy spent, spends its latter half in keening lament. Meanwhile, “Decider” with its rather gothic, almost ritualistic intro gives way to a thick bass riff over incessant blasts, eventually exploding into quasi-mathcore freneticism ala Rolo Tomassi. Simultaneously, outside of these moments, much of the rest of the track is a dead-ringer for recent Dreadnought, particularly the epic instrumental outro. Feversea contain multitudes. 

Closer “Kindred Spirit” leans further into the post-black influences, opening with a lengthy instrumental section which centres tremolo picking and unrelenting blasts. The move towards a doomier pace and emphasis on vocal harmonies thereafter recalls the more recent work of Dreadnought, probably Feversea’s closest match in style. “Sunkindling”, despite its brevity, is perhaps the most unique track. Centred around a defiant chug, a palimpsest of vocal layers form a subtle-yet-apocalyptic backing choir bestowing a much more epic quality, and yet an instrumental wall-of-sound constantly threatens to drown out the voice of the collective. The production, clear and capacious, allows the comparative weightiness of this track’s choices to really shine; the dynamic contrast between Feversea’s inherent sonic chiaroscuro is prioritised by the production for the better. Nevertheless, this is one of few moments to truly wow; it’s the moments that stand against the post-metal and post-black foundations that see Feversea at their best, but these aren’t enough to define tracks.

Demonstrating an intimate and accomplished understanding of the trappings of the genre, Feversea show a great deal of promise here. Whilst the band’s promise of “incorporating influences from neofolk and post-punk” feels a touch overstated, lacking the more overt swings of Messa’s latest, it’s nevertheless the daring to incorporate outside influences that makes Man Under Erasure. Perhaps the trap of pedestrian post-metal hasn’t been fully shorn, but Feversea are at no risk of being erased.

Recommended tracks: Sunkindling, Decider, Until It Goes Away
You may also like: Dreadnought, Huntsmen
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Dark Essence Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Feversea is:
– Isak Lønne Emberland (guitar)
– Ada Lønne Emberland (vocals)
– Alexander Lange (guitars)
– Jeremie Malezieux (drums)
– Aleksander Johnsen Solberg (bass)

The post Review: Feversea – Man Under Erasure appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Black metal, post-black metal, blackgaze (mixed vocals, mostly harsh)
Recommended for fans of: Numenorean, Astronoid, Alcest, Ghost Bath
Country: Romania
Release date: 18 May 2025

Maybe it’s due to my Pacific Northwest upbringing, but I’ve always found comfort in overcast skies and long stretches of dark. And while I don’t think of myself as a sad person, I’m drawn to sad music the way someone might be drawn to black clouds or the night feeling. I find a certain kind of beauty in melancholy that doesn’t ask for resolution—it just exists, quiet and steady, like a hard truth that no one is trying to fix. A song steeped in sorrow can feel oddly comforting, not because I’m looking to wallow, but because there’s something artful about the way sadness is shaped into sound—stretching melodies, choosing words more carefully, and making silence, yes, even silence, more meaningful.

Which is exactly what Genune’s Infinite Presence does. While the album is rooted in black metal and certainly makes a blistering entrance, it quickly reveals its true nature: a collection of tracks dripping with dejection but glowing with cautious optimism. Genune’s primary tool in balancing this duality is their guitar work. The tracks are driven forward with furiously strummed power chord progressions that loudly echo black metal’s punk ancestry, yet they’re imbued with bright, yearning melodies and chord progressions that wouldn’t feel out of place on an Astronoid record.

On top of these chord progressions, Genune layer arpeggiated melodies that cut through the noise like threads of light. Nowhere is this more effective than on “Little Fountains,” where the lead lines tug at the heart with a delicate ache. “I Want You Here” is another standout—its chiming guitar motifs echo like bells from a tower that simultaneously acknowledge a period of mourning as they ring in a new day. While sadness is in the soundscape, the melodies and instrumentation refuse to let the hurt wallow, pulling it forward one trembling note at a time.

Even songs that seem like they are going to break out of this mold eventually come back around. “To Not Grow Old” and “Stay a Little Longer” both begin in familiar dissonant territory wrought with scraping textures and scowling, raspy vocal work, but they soon shift into the same melodic sensitivity that defines Infinite Presence. These transitions are arguably the only seamless ones on the entire album; elsewhere, the shifts into different flavors of melancholy are a bit too abrupt or unnatural, sometimes even between tracks. “Little Fountains” feels like it ends in the middle of a thought not fully articulated, being interrupted by the intro of “Stay a Little Longer.” Some transitions also come completely out of left field, such as the switch into a distinctly synthwave extended outro on that same track.

Calling out an oddity such as that synthwave outro seems strange when zooming out on Infinite Presence since the album generally stirs in distinct influence from other genres to great effect. Streaks of 90s alt-rock and even Americana surface throughout the LP. The title track is an extended interlude that sounds akin to a withered, folksy blues song plucked from the rocking chair of a rural porch, while a lot of the melodic flow and instrumental textures in tracks such as “The Sun Will Always Shine” and “I Want You Here” wouldn’t sound out of place on an R.E.M. or Cranberries album. Yet, Infinite Presence is still a black metal album. Though not without its quiet and pensive, clean-sung, and post- bits, plenty of blast beats, raspy and harsh vocal lines, and scorching guitar work make up its core. The contrast might occasionally dip into Gimmickland—like that piano bit in “The Sun Will Always Shine,” which is simultaneously beautiful and goofy—but the emotional core is so earnest I can’t fault it for those brief detours.

In the same way a grey sky can feel warm, Infinite Presence holds space for both sorrow and solace. Without asking you to pick a side, it wants you to feel hope and despair, fragility and ferocity—and invites you to sit with all of it. While some fumbled transitions and rocky experimentation keep the album out of flawless territory, its emotional clarity and melodic ambition more than make up for its rough edges. Genune may still be working out the finer points of their fusion, but what they’ve created is something I’ll revisit: a black metal album that both aches and dares to feel hopeful.

Recommended tracks: Little Fountains, I Want You Here, The Sun Will Always Shine
You may also like: Zéro Absolu, Ultar, Together to the Stars
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Label: Consouling Sounds – Official Website | Instagram | Facebook

Genune is:
Dragoș Chiricheș – guitars, synths, acoustic guitar
Cosmin Farcău – guitars
István Vladăreanu – bass, voice
Abel Păduret – drums
Victor Neicutescu – voice

The post Review: Genune – Infinite Presence appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by Nick Steinhardt

Style: blackgaze (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Lantlôs, Møl, Sadness, Harakiri for the Sky
Country: US-CA
Release date: 28 March 2025

Whether you’re a black-metal purist, a blackgaze-hipster, or simply a fan of innovation in music, you’ve probably run into the story of Deafheaven at some point—the story of how they released an album with a pink cover filled to the brim with pretty melodies while also being undoubtedly rooted in black metal. I am, of course, talking about their 2013 album Sunbather, a black metal opus flavored with indie rock and screamo inspiration that also spawned some of the most toxic arguments in every music forum of the time. Just have a look at the reviews for the album on Metallum and you’ll find no middle point between 0s and 100s. Some took this new idea with open arms and celebrated it to no end, while more purist fans of the genre flat out rejected it as not kvlt, an embarrassment to metal. 

Where did I lie in this whole mess? Well, I got into metal in 2017, so I showed up to this war like Troy Barnes arriving with pizzas into a burning apartment. The comment warfare in random Loudwire videos addressing Sunbather certainly made me curious, and I approached it with an open mind. Not to my surprise, the purists were wrong, and I experienced one of the coolest releases of the decade whilst not paying attention in biology class. Deafheaven really knew how to deliver chaos with a hopeful tone. The lyrics were interesting, the structure of the album was impeccable, and every song left you feeling like you had just experienced an epic journey where you found hope in the darkest of times. Despite exploring territories both gritty and dreamy in subsequent works, Deafheaven never seemed to reach the level of critical acclaim born from that one pomegranate pink album. Not until this year, at least, as Deafheaven’s latest release, Lonely People with Power, has generated an equally fervent discourse in the music sphere. Bear with me as I try to explain why this LP has put our blackgaze buddies back on top of the music critic websites.

For starters, the sound of Lonely People with Power is… harsh. Even the heaviest tracks on previous LPs don’t compare to ‘’Doberman’’ or ‘’Magnolia’’; these songs have minimal blackgaze undertones and are simple black-metal bangers through and through. Everything is spot on here, be it the creative and energetic drum compositions from Daniel Tracy, providing a big sense of urgency and franticness, or Kerry Mckoy’s intricate guitar work that always manages to keep things interesting with a mixture of furious tremolo picking and agonizingly relentless melodies. Even when the lighter, dreamier moments of previous albums come, they usually function as huge climaxes after minutes of unrelenting tension. 

The entirety of Lonely People with Power feels like a short film of sorts, and these climaxes have a near-cinematic feel of experiencing a turning point in the story that keeps you on your toes, awaiting the next twist that is about to arise. Further exhibiting this cinematic vibe, Lonely People flows seamlessly whilst also utilizing breaks, silences or interludes before any larger shifts in sound. The ‘’Incidental’’ tracks all but confirm a three-act structure with how well they set up introduction, confrontation, and resolution. A particular highlight is “Incidental II”, in which a quiet, somber interlude is interrupted by a barrage of industrial sounds, expressing a sense of distress within the album’s story. This major tension setter effectively prepares the listener for the strongest point of the album—the tracks ‘’Revelator’’ and ‘’Body Behaviour’’. The former has a riff that will stick in your brain upon first listen and nag you until you hit replay, along with a melody that expresses panic and distress, which follows along the lyrics of self-loathing and irreparable ego and builds upon the previous track’s distressing atmosphere. On the other hand, ‘’Body Behaviour’’ leans as close as ever to their sound from Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, particularly its chorus that fuses dream pop and black metal. 

All the while, George Clarke delivers the best vocals of his career. Whether taking the lead or acting as a rhythmic addition to the chaos, each lyric is delivered with passion and anger, further raising the album’s already unbelievable intensity. Take, for example, the track “Amethyst”, where two minutes of spoken word build up allow for him to make a huge, dramatic entrance. Clarke sounds like an anguished man who’s desperate to stay alive, and the lyrics match, putting you in the shoes of a salvaged being who will not stop searching for a “glow”. Following its title, the album portrays people whose hunger for power consumes them to the point of being unable to form meaningful relationships or find a higher purpose in life. These people then try to find meaning and connect with others through morally dubious means—the exemplary “Body Behaviour” for instance explores two powerful men attempting to bond over the sexualization of women.

The only flaw I can pinpoint is that the album takes a bit to get going, with the first fifteen minutes or so missing the highlights of later tracks. But this slower start lends an even bigger punch to Lonely People’s middle and ending parts, making what follows all the more impactful. The whole album functions as one big blackgaze track in that sense, with the first half building unrelenting tension and the second finally releasing it all in incredible catharsis. And boy is it a payoff, for its second half is perfection. The penultimate track ‘’Winona’’ brings the listener an extreme amount of catharsis with what is arguably the album’s best climax. The track’s build-up thrives in its simplicity, scaling things back mid-song to a beautiful acoustic guitar melody before exploding with distortion and tremolo picking, unleashing a barrage of emotions while re-working that same melody. The climax itself is vintage Deafheaven—major-key melodies with black metal shrieks that make you feel like gravity no longer exists and you can finally float away into heaven. And if that wasn’t enough, closing track ‘’The Marvelous Orange Tree’’ delivers a slower, yet equally epic and heavenly atmosphere with dream-pop vocals and a blackened but mellowed out sound.

Twelve years ago, Deafheaven caused a rampage in the metal community with the controversial Sunbather. After the dust settled, a general consensus formed: Sunbather is a modern classic. And yet, Deafheaven refused to recycle their formula, opting to always offer something new with their releases. The fruits of innovation grew for over a decade and brought us yet another masterpiece in Lonely People With Power.

Recommended tracks: Revelator, Winona
You may also like: Skagos, Together to the Stars, Asunojokei, Constellatia, Violet Cold
Final verdict: 9/10

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

Label: Roadrunner Records – Facebook

Deafheaven is:
– George Clarke (vocals)
– Kerry McCoy (guitars)
– Chris Johnson (bass)
– Daniel Tracy (drums)
– Shiv Mehra (guitars, keyboards)

The post Review: Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Bruno Gonzalez

Style: Blackgaze, post-metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deafheaven, Alcest, Saon, Lantlôs, Agalloch
Country: Austria
Release date: 24 January 2025

Since 2011, Harakiri for the Sky have made themselves a notable presence in the metal scene—not a headliner band nor a forgettable opener. Their sound defines an accessible fusion of the deeply layered and atmospheric aspects of post-metal, with a sprinkling of melody infused black metal. All of this crystallizes into melancholic journeys through somber, aural landscapes.

Everything about the creation of Scorched Earth set the stage for a massive return to form. The band’s 2018 album Arson was followed by a series of middling, unremarkable albums. When their 2021 release, Mære, left both me and critics cold, it was clear that Harakiri for the Sky needed a new creative spark. This inspiration took root in the hiatus that occurred from 2021 to 2025, which involved J.J. (Michael V. Wahntraum) going on a personal pilgrimage of self-discovery; he was processing the end of a long-time relationship, which led him to a family-owned cabin far off in the woods, where he could find himself in solitude. Simultaneously, civilization itself was in the middle of the COVID pandemic, which added a world-weary angle to J.J.’s contemplations.

Harakiri for the Sky are masters of painting a gloomy vista: the use of emotive, if somewhat predictable harmony, layered vastness with piercing high melodies and ostinatos, and a strong sense of when to break from a momentous riff. Whether it’s a rainy day, a break up, or sense of existential unease, their sound functions as the backdrop to them all. The issue is, can they make a collection of songs that offers more than just a vibe—an album worth keeping?

The potential of being a keeper is present in Scorched Earth, manifested particularly in “With Autumn I’ll Surrender”. It is structured around a catchy motif which glides over the blackgaze/post-metal landscapes constructed by the rhythmic escalations of the harmonic beauty—starting slow, then reaching a gallop. Across the song’s eight minutes, this motif is built up, deviated from, and reintroduced in ways that keep the idea fresh and impactful. The issue, however, is that none of the other tracks measure up to it.

The band can’t escape the trap of songs having a convincing aesthetic but a vanishing trace of substance. This might not be apparent on a moment-to-moment basis, but the album’s overall songwriting leaves much to be desired. The beginning theme of “Heal Me,” consisting of a post-rock-esque soaring melody, becomes indistinct by drawing itself out and consisting mainly of tremolo-picked long notes—in this case, if the theme had more substantial variations that introduce a busier texture beyond tremolo picking, it might have been a keeper. “Keep Me Longing” has a theme containing a series of arpeggios, but its use in the song could easily be mistaken for some kind of secondary section, as it just doesn’t seem to have much of an identity. Although this theme is busy, it lacks contrast. Contours and textures that aren’t arpeggio-like would have gone far in making the motif more unique, and perhaps a more engaged rhythm section would have made the overall songwriting stronger. But a lack of diversity and memorability plague nearly the entire album.

In an ideal world, every song would be equally distinct, based firmly on ideas that compelled a relisten. Instead of lamenting its failures, I would suggest that the band look to the highlights of The Ruins of Beverast and Absu to develop a bit more sophistication in their composition in order to push themselves further. However, such a hope for Harakiri Of The Sky is a pipe dream, since they consistently fail to make songs that stand out from one another at all. Scorched Earth is a beautiful, but ultimately forgettable album. The only possible way forward from here is to take cues from the likes of Agalloch and Alcest in terms of motif-work.

Recommended tracks: With Autumn I’ll Surrender
You may also like: Together to the Stars, Constellatia, Asunojokei
Final verdict: 6/10

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

Label: AOP – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Harakiri for the Sky is:
– J.J. (vocals)
– M.S. (guitar, bass, producer)
– Krimh (drums)

The post Review: Harakiri for the Sky – Scorched Earth appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Cover art:  Neseblod Records (formerly Helvete), April 2024, by Grete Neseblod¹

Style: Black Metal, Blackgaze, Post-Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Harakiri for the Sky, Ghost Bath
Country: France
Release date: 31 January 2025

Because of black metal’s diabolical origins, I am always surprised by how much the genre has expanded beyond its purest form. While many newer acts in the scene still adhere to the corpse-painted, low-fidelity, satanic, musical chromaticism of the old guard, several branches have been grafted onto the deciduous black metal tree. Though still a stark and imposing sight at night, in the light of day you can see its colorful flora, fruit, and many shades of green leaves. I’m honestly grateful for this because even though I enjoy many aspects of traditional black metal, the genre didn’t click with me when we were first introduced in my youth. Even today, I can’t stomach it in large doses. Not the pure, uncut cocai—er, black metal at any rate. For every bit of Darkthrone I consume, I need an equal or greater amount of something in the vein of Numenorean or Obsequiae to take the edge off.

Enter La Saignée, the “debut” LP from France’s Zéro Absolu—the band formerly known as Glaciation. The name change was unfortunately a legal necessity since a member who was fired from the group (Nicolas Saint-Morand, aka RMS Hreidmarr) quickly ran to register the trademark and release an album under the name Glaciation. I can only wonder why the original members didn’t do this before releasing both an EP (1994, 2015) and an LP (Sur les falaises de marbre, 2020) under their original moniker. The Bandcamp page for La Saignée mentions that the lyrical themes “[confront] the enemies of the band and the metal scene in general.” Being a non-French speaker—but fluent in another romance language (Spanish), and having some real-world experience with yet another (Portuguese)—I didn’t need to fully rely on Google Translate to confirm this for me. Take this bit from the title track, for instance:

Oh, did I mention that Saint-Morand was purportedly fired over alcoholism issues? The lyrics in general are rife with the more colorful synonyms for urine and fecal matter, and evoke a passionate fury through their metaphors. Which, if you don’t understand French I don’t think you’d ever know, because the music itself—despite plenty of blast beats, distorted guitars, and almost entirely harsh vocals—for the most part is not angry. Made up almost entirely of traditional western minor keys and harmonies, the melodic components of La Saignée are more somber than seething, more lamentation than lambaste. Combine that with the healthy dose of structureless ambient post-metal (no verses or choruses are to be found here), and we’re sitting pretty on one of the recently grafted branches of the black metal tree.

La Saignée has two songs: the title track, which means “The Bloodletting,” and the closing track “Le Temps Détruit Tout” meaning “Time Destroys All.” The former is a twenty minute pilgrimage into the essence of Zéro Absolu—where sad chord progressions and arpeggios transition into tremolo picked indignation. A clean guitar interlude then carries you into my favorite bit of the song, where hypnotic synths accompany blast beats and anxiously strummed power chords that morph into an emotional release in half time; the guitars letting open chords ring while a xylophonic synth hovers in over the top of it all, lightly caressing the soundscape with a beauty that all but brings a tear to your eye. Thus is the magic of the daylight viewing of this genre’s tree. At this point, we are still in for twelve more minutes of the song.

Which brings me to my main gripe with La Saignée: the spoken word. On an album with two tracks that go for about half an hour, a few samples of monologues and dialogues (what their origin is I haven’t been able to discern) occur that take up a healthy chunk of the run time. The title track does this on more than one occasion. The closer does so right before an extended and repetitive synth-only section channeling Vangelis, which is honestly gorgeous, but goes on for about four minutes and wears out its welcome. These elements wouldn’t be a big deal—maybe hardly worth a mention—on an album pushing an hour, but on the shortest of LPs it’s glaring. Still, Zéro Absolu nurture the black metal tree with care. Other highlights include the second clean guitar interlude in the title track, with a descending arpeggiation and melody that remind me of Jeff Buckley of all people, and the chunky riff that closes out “Détruit” and its accompanying synth—an appropriate send off for La Saignée.

In the end, La Saignée sprouts greenery that belongs on black metal’s evolving tree. The esoteric ideas present on this release might break branches on other saplings, but the graft here is too strong to do more than bend the bough, this orchard’s sprout too deeply rooted for the drama surrounding Zéro Absolu to fell its trunk. The emotional and psychological release prepares the way for some hefty releases going forward: a bloodletting indeed.

Recommended tracks: Both of them
You may also like: Isleptonthemoon, Together to the Stars, Nishair
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Spotify

Label: Art of Propaganda – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Zéro Absolu is:
V – Vocals, texts
HM – Guitars
FMD – Keys and arrangements
IS – Bass
RR – Drums

1. This photo is from the aftermath of a fire at Neseblod Records in Oslo, Norway; a well known record shop in the area. ︎

The post Review: Zéro Absolu – La Saignée appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive metal, post-black metal, avant-garde black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Dødheimsgard, David Maxim Micic, Violet Cold, Deafheaven, Thy Catafalque
Country: New Jersey, United States
Release date: 3 January 2025

Inspired by the blossoming avant-garde black metal scene of the mid aughts, Steve Wiener’s solo project Am I in Trouble? is an ambitious undertaking. Debut album Spectrum is wonderfully explorative, and while technically a solo project, Am I in Trouble? deeply emphasizes collaboration. Armed with a so-stupid-it’s-camp band name, a troupe of collaborators, a love of strange black metal, and whatever talents he has himself—producing, writing, and playing—is Spectrum a worthy love-letter and successor to his avant influences? 

Everything about Spectrum positively bursts with vibrant color, from the popping prismatically linear cover art to the hued titling convention of the tracks to the dynamic, bright songwriting closer in tone to David Maxim Micic than to traditional black metal. All throughout Spectrum, Wiener and co. spill paint across a canvas through a variety of genres. Bookends “Yellow” and “Green” are cheery chamber music, orchestrated and pretty with Ember Belladonna’s flute adding whimsical flair. The inside of the album takes on a more sage blackgaze timbre, redolent of Alcest or Deafheaven but perhaps a touch brighter. Vocally, Spectrum is flexible; I love the laid-back blackgaze cleans but the harshes provide needed counterpoint to the melodic riffage, especially Alex Loach’s guest highs on “Black.”

Just as the vocal attack is varied, the record is eclectic but never zany, and the tracks all sound distinct—largely because of the color titling paradigm. Several tracks fit their hue to a tee. “Green” is verdant, an elegant chamber orchestration that’s clean and fresh; “Red” is the heaviest track, bloody and blasty with a second half full of standout riffs; and the instrumental “Blue” is cool with sleek bass licks and tasteful instrudjental-esque solos. Even though the other tracks don’t fit their colors as much in my mind, they’re still mighty enjoyable. For instance, “Pink” has a hail of drums underneath its main blackgaze-y riff, and while the track isn’t sinister per se, it’s far more violent than I’d expect for the color; “Black,” on the other hand, isn’t heavy enough for darkness incarnate. The color concept is undoubtedly a fun take on the genre, regardless. 

Wiener composes with admirable skill on Am I in Trouble’s debut, balancing his own contributions with guest performers and several different complex moods to fit each color. Except for a weirdly long pause during “Red,” all the transitions go smoothly even with hard-to-pull-off-convincingly changes like the acoustic guitar and flute straight into the blackgaze in “White”—the composition never feels janky. At a short thirty-one minutes, I would love to hear Wiener flex his compositional skills with a final ten minute epic, but nothing is wrong with Spectrum as is, even if the release fails to reach the dizzying heights it could.

Self declaring Spectrum to be a nostalgic love-letter to mid 2000s avant-black, Wiener is selling himself short; Spectrum progresses black metal without seeming derivative, and while Am I in Trouble? nominally is deeply influenced by a specific scene, the music here is distinct and fresh even twenty years removed from his favorite albums’ release dates. Wiener keeps his influences close to the vest in his own writing to his benefit, and I can safely say Wiener isn’t in trouble.

Recommended tracks: White, Pink, Blue, Green
You may also like: Arcturus, Grey Aura, Sigh, Cicada the Burrower, Constellatia
Final verdict: 7/10

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

Label: independent

Am I in Trouble? is:
– Steve Wiener (everything)

The post Review: Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: blackgaze, atmospheric black metal, folk black metal, post-metal, new age (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Summoning, Myrkur
Country: Ethiopia
Release date: 5 December 2024

The pseudonym for a shaman whose true name is unpronounceable to humankind, Enat Meret resides in a realm of pure energy where she guides those lost in darkness. Her world pulses with resonant powers, the spiritual and corporeal no longer separated, flowing in streams of liquid light. Here, music is a vitalistic force, as alive as you or I, its energy as awesome as a god’s. She desires to bring her power to Earth so that we once again become one entangled force with our mother planet we have divorced ourselves from before we further effect a cataclysm of Solarian proportion; she is also a vocalist. Cosmic black metal act Nishaiar, dwellers of the Portals of Zenadaz, are her prophet, their music seeking to bridge the two realms. 

How could a band ever live up to the promise of music with the potential to unite mankind and reacquaint our species with our ravaged planet—that their music is from a universe of pure photonic energy? I’ve known that Nishaiar had the potential for a few years; I adore the Ethiopian band’s “terrestrial year 2021” output, Nahaxar, and I think that album—with its characteristic and unique blend of wall-of-sound post-metal, atmospheric black metal, and tribalistic chants and percussion—could conceivably have emanated from some nacreous Shambhala. Nahaxar was at once apocalyptic with its overwhelming climaxes but in the end always kept a sense of hope for the purpose of humanity through its humanistic folk in the wonderful post-crescendo sections. Although Nahaxar didn’t quite reach the limitlessness that the description of Enat Meret promises, I could easily imagine the band evolving to harness her powers fully. At any moment after turning on Enat Meret the first time, I expected a voltaic shock from the otherworldly black metal as Enat Meret’s voice and prophets transformed me in my blindness into a world of new colors divorced from my fleshly confines: it never came.

At odds with the spiritually and musically intense thematics, the sixth album from the Gondar-based group takes a more relaxed approach than does Nahaxar, operating in a style closer to new age-y post-rock than to black metal for much of its hour-long runtime. Not until the third track “Yemelek” does Enat Meret culminate in anything more than unexcitable post-rock, and the stuttering synths and weak, reverb-y female vocals of Lycus Aeternus, Enat Meret, or Lord of Zenadadz (I do not know which of the three members credited with vocals does what) are redolent of Myrkur’s weakest album, Spine. “Yemelek” with its huge wall of black metal, celestial and angelic chanting, and trumpets, however, is immensely satisfying despite the too-long buildup of the first two songs. The latter half of the track features a deluge of percussion like a meteor shower and even a sax solo, which while a little out of place timbrally, is well-composed in context. A few other tracks reach similar blackened highs—“Enat Midir” and “Heyan” notably—and these tracks stand out amid the stream of folky new age and frail shoegaze-y post-metal similar to Alcest’s Les Chants de l’Aurore.

The lack of metal in the rest of the tracklist significantly takes away from the impact of Enat Meret, noticeably the enervated female vocals which only work in juxtaposition with the mostly absent harsh vocals. I would expect and desire Enat Meret’s realm to positively burst with explosive force like Sunyata or Mare Cognitum when translated to Earthly music by her conduit Nishaiar; the plaintive ambient folk is lovely but slightly boring in its placidity. Within these atmospheric tracks, some styles work better than others: for instance, the hypnotic percussion of “Netsa” plays into the band’s Ethiopian origins without being trope-y, but “Alem” is slow and rather bland post-rock. Moreover, Enat Merat is fairly bloated, and if the album were ten tracks rather than fifteen, cutting out several of the filler tracks between the black metal ones, the buildups before the releases would be less tedious. 

Additionally, on Nahaxar, the flow between metal, post-rock, and folk music worked well thematically. Massive swells of black metal heralded calamity with civilization-destroying force; then in the aftermath, post-rock provided a delicate release of tension, a stillness to peacefully contemplate; the folk segments from the cradle of humanity provided a glimpse into a rebuilding, stripped of distortion and, by extension, technology, returned to Earth as it were; finally, the cycle would repeat. Hubris is the way of mankind. Enat Meret, while largely composed of the same basic timbres and genres, is arranged much more haphazardly. I feel no sense of internal logic governing the occasion of switches between genres—they shift, and that’s that. Compared with the breathtaking narrative flow and ambition Nishaiar has achieved before, Enat Meret comes across as a bit rudderless.   

My soul was ready to be led by Enat Meret’s shamanic wisdom—I’d looked forward to a Nahaxar follow-up for three years now—but I don’t feel significantly changed. Perhaps it’s because I’m already environmentally aware and in touch with Earth, rendering me less changed by the shamanic power than Taylor Swift or Elon Musk would be or perhaps it’s because I’m a bigger fan of cosmic black metal than of new age ambient. I still think Nishaiar is a project worth listening to and among the best metal acts Africa has, but I will undoubtedly be returning to Nahaxar instead of Enat Meret for my fix of otherworldly spiritual energy.

Recommended tracks: Yemelek, Mebet Kubet, Netsa, Heyan
You may also like: Eldamar, Violet Cold, Kaatayra, Bríi, Mesarthim, Medenera, Nelecc, Celestial Annihilator
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Nishaiar is:
– Explorer of the Abyss (bass)
– Arcturian Night (drums)
– Lord of Zenadadz (guitars, vocals)
– Lycus Aeternam (keyboards, vocals)
– Enat Meret (vocals)

The post Review: Nishaiar – Enat Meret appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Album art by Detestor Graphics

Style: Post-black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deafhaven, Heretoir
Country: Sweden
Release date: 6 September 2024

I’ve had a soft spot for the type of black metal that’s watered down by other subgenres for as long as I’ve been reviewing music, so my love affair with post-black metal/blackgaze should be of little surprise. The manner in which it blends the raw intensity of black metal with ethereal and emotional flavours is akin to a cathartic ray of light—a way to show hope within the darkness. That combination is something that routinely plucks at my heartstrings like Nero fiddling away while Rome burns.

Together to the Stars is no exception—I was already familiar with their entire catalog, and admittedly very excited coming into this third release. Their previous two LPs had showcased the two sides to this band which I’ve grown to really like: a by-the-numbers, climax heavy post-black side on An Oblivion Above that delivered on long build ups and harrowingly beautiful production, and a rawer, crunchier blackgaze side with a bigger focus on standard songs and a heftier punch on As We Wither. However, the wide disconnect between both releases left me wondering what direction they’d take for their third release; would they create another completely different sound? Would they just repeat one of their previous sounds? Would they mix them both? In any case, if there’s one thing I can say, it’s that Together to the Stars did not disappoint. 

The Fragile Silence maintains the core songwriting process present in their debut and its heavenly atmosphere with some of the rawer, deeply emotional sections found in their sophomore. This creates an album that is at an all time high in terms of theatrics and angst; the guitar melodies accompanying the black metal blueprint feel grand and sweeping. Meanwhile, vocalist Franco Fuentes pulls off a performance that drowns you in anguish, building on grand melodies and climaxes, the few quieter sections that occur post climax haunted by this feeling of grief-stricken nostalgia. Add multiple orchestral breaks on top of all that and you’ve got an album that aims straight for your heart. 

Such a specific sound can be very hit or miss, but it definitely hits for me. I connected with The Fragile Silence the second that incredible first riff in “Mercurius” hit; a simple yet effective way to open an album with a beautiful, haunting melody that sends you back in time to a memory that feels both so close yet so distant’ it’s as if the dreampop soundscapes of Deafheaven blended itself with the cathartic combination of heavy riffs and strong melodies of subgenre mainstays like Heretoir. The shrieks join in shortly after while it straps in your belt and sends you down a typical black-metal soundscape of blast beats and tremolo riffs all the while maintaining strong major chord melodies with orchestral undertones. The tune then masterfully balances the grim atmosphere and hopeful melodies with the help of a few brief acoustic interludes that help space out the riff-fest present throughout the second half of the song. This core formula doesn’t change at all throughout the record, but clocking it at just over forty minutes means that Together to the Stars get the most out of this musical landscape without causing any ear fatigue.

While there are few apparent flaws to break The Fragile Silence, the production value isn’t quite as good as it could be. Together to the Stars thrive in their grandiosity and even manage to include some trickier instruments like violins without ruining the entire sound of a song. but some sections, particularly in the drums have an unnecessary rawness to try to enhance the emotions on display; this leads to the rhythm section disappearing into the background washing them out in an otherwise clear, crisp mix.

But even then, that’s only a very small issue in a general experience that connected with me on a level that little music has done in a while. The Fragile Silence is a marvelous display of how to do emotionally charged extreme metal, and while it might not bring anything you haven’t already heard to the table, it’ll make a fine addition to your collection of post-black albums for those times you need to be hit straight in the feels.

Recommended tracks: Mercurius, The Last Glacier
You may also like: Constellatia, Ba’al, Evergarden
Final verdict: 8/10

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

Label: Northern Silence Productions – Bandcamp | Facebook

Together to the Stars is:
– David Steinmarck (keyboards, guitars, vocals)
– William Zackrisson (keyboards, guitars)
– Sebastian Ryderberg (bass)
– Magnus Brolin Stjärne (drums)

The post Review: Together to the Stars – The Fragile Silence appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde black metal, brutal prog, zeuhl, third stream, blackgaze (I swear it’s instrumental despite having published lyrics)
Recommended for fans of: Liturgy, Magma, Sadness
Country: United States-TX
Release date: 21 June 2024

To name one’s band after a Xenakis ballet places critical pressure and expectation on oneself. Xenakis’s Kraanerg (meaning accomplished action in Greek) marries his stochastic, electroacoustic music with his orchestral works, interspersed with twenty-two periods of silence—all set to dance in the original performances. Like all his compositions, it’s dense, mathematical, and intellectually challenging, at the vanguard of 20th century art music. As far as “popular” musics go, black metal is undoubtedly among the most progressive, yet for Kraanerg to draw explicit comparisons to Xenakis on a debut album should set an expectation for compositional, performative, and conceptual brilliance that few metal acts have ever achieved. 

Strikingly, before hearing a note Kraanerg makes their ambitious name seem reasonable by enlisting D.L. (of Kostnatěni, my 2023 Prog Subway album of the year) on guitar duties and the legendary Markov Soroka (Tchornobog, Aureole, Drown) handling production, bringing together two of the most creative minds in the metalsphere. Yet despite the inclusion of this black metal guitar deity, it is Nat Bergrin’s piano and synths along with Danny Kamins’s saxophone which dominate the sound, a cacophonous duo who Soroka fills the entire acoustic space with. Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun is built with Bergrin’s piano as a foundation, similar to acts like Bríi, Wreche, or Liturgy, leaving only the blast beats to make the album a “metal” one; however, the piano’s timbre naturally takes Kraanerg just as much through the worlds of third stream and brutal prog as through metal, brimming with a simultaneous intensity and laid-back haziness. The sounds emanating from their keys are mysterious and magical—a nostalgic, gorgeous emotional intensity with the tone and chord progressions.

The successes of Kraanerg lie in the overwhelming sections where layers of distortion, eerily beautiful keyboards, drums, and sax raucously meet. The title of track two, “The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone),” succinctly describes its emotional and musical weight, the recording nearly unable to contain all the noise the band create in a euphoric transcendence. The blast beats provide a feeling of ascension as described in the manifesto of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy), and the piece colorfully explodes. The saxophone leads also provide a creative edge to Kraanerg with a glowing tone that feels natural as the melodic figurehead of Kraanerg’s subtly volatile style, adding the jazzy zeuhlishness which makes the project so strange. 

All the piano and sax prevents me from hearing much of D.L.’s guitar playing which seems only to add a distorted texture throughout the entirety of Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun. And disappointingly, I can’t pinpoint any notable violin parts despite Daniel Cho being credited with a performance, and, confusingly, all three tracks have lyrics yet I can’t figure out where the vocals are except for in an unnecessary spoken whisper section in “Here the Ground Is a Spandrel.” I don’t doubt Soroka as a producer—he has far too much pedigree in this style and others—and the production perfectly encapsulates the album and its odd glamor, yet it also stifles the album into a maddening wall of pretty noise, drowning out as many layers of instrumentation as I can parse. Moreover, while always pleasant and slightly strange, the melodies still manage to be a tad trite, full of blackgaze cliches—I definitely hear influence from Sadness or Trhä. Even with Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun’s successful capacity for occasional transcendence, the journey it meanders through detaches me, and I can’t quite figure out how to stick with the music. I am no stranger to weird music and Kraanerg’s aesthetic choices are for-the-most-part convincing, but something is slightly off with the album in addition to the intentional weirdness: my best bet is a lack of focused songwriting. While that occasionally works, I think it hinders Kraanerg from making an impression in its oppressive noise. 

Kraanerg certainly push forward what I’ve heard in the strangeness of acts like Trhä with the jazziness and production quality, but they haven’t hit a masterpiece yet. Bergrin’s vision is impressive, and as always I respect their ambition, but Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun frustrated me more than I’d like to admit for a genre I’m quite comfortable in, but less in the fun abstruse way and more in the this is almost the next-best-thing-since-sliced-bread way. Perhaps in a follow up, a tad more Xenakis influence could be the key.

Recommended tracks: The Deluge (Pipes Burst from Joy Alone)
You may also like: Kostnatěni, Tchornobog, Cicada the Burrower, Wreche, Papangu, Botanist, El Mantis, Bríi, Trhä
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Not Music – Bandcamp | Facebook

Kraanerg is:
– Nat Bergrin (composition, piano, synths, electronics, additional guitars)
– Angel Garcia (drums, vocals)
– D.L. (guitars)
– Danny Kamins (saxophone)
– Daniel Cho (violin)

The post Review: Kraanerg – Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Post Black Metal, Blackgaze (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Cult of Luna, Sylvaine
Review by: Andy
Country: South Africa
Release date: 11 November, 2022

Back when life was simpler, when I began to delve deeper into the world of metal in middle school, I had one primary metric to measure whether a band was for me or not: Do they have good guitar solos? If that answer yielded a yes, the band was for me–it was as simple as that. Now, I have internalized rubrics and mental maps of every aspect of a band’s sound even during more passive listening. In fact, if it weren’t for the father/son solo on “Merkurius Gilded” (the Kenny G and Max Gorelick in Imperial Triumphant), I probably couldn’t even tell you my solo of the year anymore. I turned on Constellatia because pretty album covers are a weakness of mine, and my first listen exploded with color, vibrancy, and power that I want from the pretty backing of -gaze genres. So why’d I start my review talking about guitar solos?

Magisterial Romance has some phenomenal solos, obviously. They’re what I picked up on during my first listen of the album, and those solos bring the explosively colorful album blooming to life like the cover art. Take, for instance, the first song, “Palace,” when at about 6:30 a triumphant solo bursts forth from the shimmery blackened and post metal section–the trem-picked section in the middle of the solo stood out as particularly spectacular and as a relatively uncommon technique utilization. But after the solo, the track is plaintive and boring as blackgaze often is in between more biting moments. When Constellatia plays around with metal textures, they’re quite adept at simultaneously playing the heart strings; conversely, the languid, post rock and shoegaze segments snuck between blast beats and trem-picks are particularly weak moments across Magisterial Romance.

This struggle between powerful but beautiful melodies and less engaging, quieter parts has plagued blackgaze for well over a decade now: This is what keeps the genre fairly stagnate and why most everything sounds like some iteration of Alcest. To keep the textures and style of the genre requires a fairly limited toolset. Constellatia supplements their brand of blackened shoegaze with strong echoes of post metal with many calmer segments and vocals sounding not too far off of Cult of Luna, and while I appreciate the attempts at expanding the genre’s sound, Constellatia do not flat-out succeed in these moments as waiting for the next solo or explosion of black metal drumming becomes a time-biding game. 

But boy when those segments hit, they hit. “Paean Emerging” finishes the album with the best payoff for the time lost by the post noodling that it could. The song begins with black metal; then, a beautiful solo turns into distortionless trems which transition into a horrifying black metal scream, and that turns into a furious, climactic storm. For all the moments I feel a strong breeze could blow away the lackluster post sections, the band pretty much makes up for it with the howling finale. 

A slightly dry, cold production really holds the album back the most; more warmth would make the less active sections more inviting to listen to–my mind only wanders so much during them because they feel disinviting even though the writing during them isn’t all that poor on its own. For instance, the ending of “Adorn” has a highlight retro synth arpeggio while de-crescendoing that stands up with more energetic moments. While Magisterial Romance falls victim to many of the classic blackgaze blunders, it also tries to expand upon the sound a little bit. And, of course, the album has some ass-kicking, awesome solos. Perhaps my general non-affinity for blackgaze colors my take on the album too much, but I highly recommend Magisterial Romance if you have a greater affinity toward the style.

Recommended tracks: Palace, Paean Emerging
You may also like: An Abstract Illusion, Asunojokei
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Season of Mist – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Constellatia is:
– Gideon Lamprecht (guitars, vocals?)
– Keenan Oakes (vocals, bass?)

The post Review: Constellatia – Magisterial Romance appeared first on The Progressive Subway.