so I’ve been listening to metal for the first time in a while over the past couple weeks and after sifting through some recent black metal releases I found one that’s stuck with me.
I can already see the objections to Obsequiae’s Aria of Vernal Tombs: it’s immaculately produced, running counter to the low fi aesthetic you wanna target in a bm release; its overly focused on saccharine melody; there aren’t enough genuine bm tropes to justify itself as a part of the genre. All of that shit is true. The point of the record is to put the lead guitars into the foreground and let them move without any resistance from the other instrumentation. There’s little (though still definitely some) creativity with the percussion, few opportunities for the kind of blastbeating that cvlt fans of second wave bm like so much. The only thing paradigmatically bm about the record are the vocals, which feel more like an afterthought than a constitutive part of the listening experience. In spite of all that, the album works because of its commitment to the neo-medieval aesthetic, making it a smart iteration from earlier melodic bm stuff in dissection and sacramentum, and the strength of the songwriting. For what it’s worth, I keep coming back to this tape before all the other recent stuff I’ve listened to in part because it’s unlike anything else I’ve heard from a bm band.
Black metal fans should check it out and I’d suggest it even to some of you guys who are more into folk/power metal or even just more atmospheric music in general. There are thrashy portions of the record, principally to help break up the pace, but these guys aren’t overly dedicated to that bathory-strain of bm that wants to play a mile a minute.
e: sample track
https://m.