FARSOT – LIFE PROMISED DEATH

(Life Promised Death is out now on Lupus Lounge)

Farsot‘s 2017 album, Fail·Lure, is – in my humble opinion, at least – one of the best Black Metal records of the last ten, if not twenty, years.

Which means, of course, that Life Promised Death has a lot to live up to, especially with almost seven years of built up expectations to contend with on top of that.

Now, Farsot have always been one of the more intelligent and progressively-minded Black Metal bands, that’s for sure, but perhaps the smartest choice they’ve made with their new album is choosing not to try and replicate and recreate the success of its seminal predecessor

Instead, in a move not entirely dissimilar to that which their countrymen in Secrets of the Moon (RIP) made back in the early 2010s, they’ve chosen to take a step beyond the confines of the Black Metal genre (not that they ever really let these limit their creativity before now, to be fair) in order to explore a a variety of different and more diverse sonic textures.

That doesn’t mean, to be clear, that the band have completely lost their blackened bite by any means – “Buoyant Flames” in particular combines grimly focussed fury and insidious intensity with a plethora of gloomy acoustic and doomy atmospheric embellishments, while the sublime slow-burn of “Into Vertigo” eventually builds to a scorching crescendo – it’s just that Farsot are clearly just as, if not more, interested in expanding their sound and pursuing new avenues of experimentation.

With that in mind, however, it’s worth noting that it’s not until fantastic fourth track “Chimera” – whose title sums up the eclectic and enigmatic nature of the band’s sound – that Life Promised Death really unveils its full potential, with the track’s moody opening minutes (part Agalloch, part Alice In Chains) eventually transitioning into a harsher, yet equally hypnotic, procession of sinister, shapeshifting guitars and proggy percussive patterns which will doubtless delight, and infuriate, different sections of Farsot‘s fanbase in equal measure.

From this point on – moving from the grim, grungy grooves of “Stray Dogs” to the mournful, yet also menacing, strains of “Descent” (which also features some compellingly complex drum work and impressively intricate guitar arrangements) and culminating in the dynamic darkness of mesmerising closer “Lost Momentum” – it becomes even more obvious that Farsot‘s goal is to transition to a sound which is not only “post” Black Metal (as distinct from “Post-Black Metal”) but perhaps “post-genre” altogether, by incorporating and amalgamating ideas and elements from all their influences, regardless of their source.

And while the full promise of this new approach may not have been fully realised this time around, there’s no question that Life Promised Death is another vital step on the band’s evolutionary ladder, one which I hope they keep on climbing… if only to see where it goes!