(Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, Andy Synn has three early Christmas presents for you)
I know not everyone out there celebrates Christmas – either as a religious event or an example of crass commercialism – but for me this period of the year has (with the occasional exception) always been about stepping back and taking some much-needed time to rest and relax and reconnect with family and friends.
Not everyone, of course, is so lucky, which is why today I’d like to share my many blessings with those who are less fortunate… by bringing them a black Christmas, featuring two bands I mentioned during “List Week” (but hadn’t had a chance to cover beforehand) and one whose latest album I didn’t manage to include at all (an omission I am hoping to make up for here).
CHOIR – SMITHE THEE SMOLDERING PROVIDENCE
I may be wrong, as I have no way of verifying this, but I believe we were one of the first sites to cover Choir‘s soul-crushing debut album, Songs for a Tarnished World, back in 2021 (at the very least we were well ahead of those bandwagon jumpers who only got onboard in 2023 when Total Dissonance Worship re-released it).
So I thought we should definitely say something about the band’s new album – which was released just last week – even if it’s simply to note that Smithe Thee Smoldering Presence is somehow even darker, and even more soul-destroying, than its predecessor.
Made up of two mammoth movements (which, in perhaps the album’s one and only concession towards the comfort and convenience of the listener, have been broken up into a total of seven separate tracks), the band’s second album doesn’t necessarily make any drastic changes to their sound (as the record’s suffocatingly dense delivery still clearly shares a lineage with the likes of Altarage, Portal, and Teitanblood) but concentrates its efforts instead on simply making the entire experience feel that much heavier, harsher, and more hypnotic.
“Bring Them Tired Ashes to the Black Waters”, for example, opens with a drawn-out, doom-laden slow-burn of ugly, oppressive noise which eventually transforms into a blast-driven assault of writhing, mangled guitars and gruesome, guttural vocals, only to eventually shift shape into something more noxiously atmospheric, dripping with both dread and dissonance, before climaxing in a seething burst of discordant belligerence and bile-spewing fury (capped off with an unsettlingly minimalist ambient finale) – all of which seems designed, over the course of some twenty-one minutes, to test the listener’s resilience and resolve.
Yet there’s a malign method to the band’s madness, make no mistake, with their occasional hints of eerie melody and groaning, glacial shifts between hammering heaviness and ominous emptiness demonstrating that the individual behind the art – and it is art, that’s for sure, as harsh and as horrible as it might be – is more than aware of the importance of dynamic, even if “…an Anthem for the Famine” seems, at least at first, to paint only in shades of black so dark that they seem almost indistinguishable.
But those with eyes to see and ears to hear – as well as the patience to persevere – will soon find that there’s something strangely, almost disturbingly, compelling about Choir‘s latest unholy cacophony.
GRAVENCHALICE – ECHELON
In hindsight it’s clear that, right from the beginning – and we’ve been writing about them since pretty much the start – enigmatic US collective Gravenchalice were never going to be satisfied adhering to the relatively restrictive constraints which define “true” Black Metal (and I’m sure we could argue until the proverbial cows come home about what’s more “true” to the genre’s roots – respecting its traditions or pushing the boundaries).
But it’s precisely because we’ve been there since the beginning that we’ve been able to observe their evolution (practically in real-time) from the bloodstained, Misþyrming-esque Black Metal of their early years into something altogether moodier (beginning on their sophomore album, Samael) and doomier (especially on 2022’s Via Dolorosa and last year’s Messiah) – with the recently-released Echelon taking a significant step towards the more Death Metal influenced end of the spectrum.
You can still, just about, tell it’s the same band, with the scorching intensity and seething, dissonant undercurrents of songs such as “Power” and “Virtue” re-emphasising the “blackened” side of their increasingly bombastic Black/Death sound, but the raging, riff-focussed ferocity of “Archangel”, “Dominion”, and their ilk feel like they owe as much to the likes of early God Dethroned and Hypocrisy (back when those bands were at their gnarliest and most aggressive) as they do the more pitch-black power of Svartidauði, Irkallian Oracle, etc.
Perhaps the most surprising step, however, is just how unexpectedly melodic much of the album is – albeit, during tracks like “Principality”, “Ophanim”, and “Cherubim” in particular, in a way which feels torn between harmony and discordance – especially in regards to how the guitars weave this melody into the seething torrents of distortion which spill from the speakers during every song (not to mention the unexpectedly fluid and proggy bass-lines which a keen ear will doubtless be able to discern underneath all the sound and fury).
So who are Gravenchalice then? I must admit, even after four albums (and one EP) I’m not entirely sure… but perhaps outstanding closer, “Seraphim” gives us some clues as to who, and what, they might yet become in the way it marries melodic grandeur and dissonant fervor, along with subtle touches of the band’s more progressive proclivities and a healthy helping of their increasingly aggressive tendencies, to create something more distinct, and more definitive, which may well serve as the seed for the next stage of their development.
FILII NIGRANTIUM INFERNALIUM – PÉRFIDA CONTRACÇÃO DO AÇO
Much of the criticism of Filii Nigrantium Infernalium‘s output over the years has tended to focus – rather unnecessarily, in my opinion, to the extent that much of it feels quite forced and performative – on the vocals of frontman/guitarist Belathauzer, to the point where the actual music often seems to get short shrift.
And while I suppose that his caterwauling shriek may simply be too raw and unrefined for some ears, the more that I listen the more I find this rawness, this realness, to be one of the most vital aspects of the album, with his every strained and strangled syllable conveying far more emotion than many of the more practiced and polished vocal “titans” of today (whose performances, while no doubt impressive – in a purely technical sense – rarely seem particularly expressive when it comes to actually connecting on a more human level).
There’s no worries about that here, however, as Filii Nigrantium Infernalium aren’t afraid of letting a little grit and dirt – plus a little blood and bile – make its way into their music, with tracks like “Beata Fornicanda”, “Negros Hábitos”, and “Má Criação” marrying gnarly blackened blastery and old school thrashy thrills with a fair amount of spiteful Speed Metal swagger and some shamelessly hooky, guitar-centric Heavy Metal heroics.
What really stood out to me, however – in addition to the killer riffs and mercilessly melodic leads which form the heart and soul of songs such as the cruelly catchy “Holocausto Molto Vivace Ma Non Troppo” (a major early stand-out, especially when it drops into its massive mid-song groove) and unapologetically infectious closer “Chuva Dourada” – is the subtly proggy, insidiously occult undercurrent which can be faintly detected during the likes of “Cristo.Rei.Animal.” (especially as it descends towards its grimier, groovier, finale) and the shapeshifting title track (both of which put me in mind of the band’s devilishly artsy distant cousins in Dødsengel).
It’s with the moody black magic of “Vaticanale”, however, where the Portuguese quartet really decide to go for broke, building – slowly but surely – over the course of nearly nine-minutes of stomping grooves and doomy menace towards an absolutely massive climax which involves pseudo-symphonic keyboards, chilling hypnotic chants, and soaring clean/harsh vocal layering… all of which combine to give the song a more than fitting aura of dark Satanic majesty that feels just that little bit more epic and “larger than life” than the rest of the record.
Sure, aspects of the band’s sound and identity may still prove divisive, but I don’t doubt that Filii Nigrantium Infernalium are going to have several new converts to their coven after people hear this one.