(written by Islander)
Like other genres of extreme metal, a good case can be made that black metal in its earliest stages evolved from punk rock. But black metal continued to evolve in ways that essentially left punk behind. Some bands did not completely cut the tie, but many did, and so the fundamental tropes of subversive “second wave” black metal as they took shape in the early ’90s, and which persist to this day, bear little resemblance to where things started.
Yet in more recent times, maybe most notably over the last decade I’d say, we’ve seen a new emergence of punk influence in black metal, not really a rolling back of the clock to the earliest days but a hybridization of punk, hardcore, or crust and second wave Scandinavian black metal.
Many bands have embraced that hybrid form, and Final Dose from the UK are one of them, and one of the best. But they have also evolved, bringing other stylistic ingredients into their mix besides those two main ones in order to better express the emotional torrents that fuel their work.
The results are vividly on display in their viscerally powerful new album Under The Eternal Shadow, which we’re premiering and reviewing today in advance of its release on April 11th by Wolves of Hades.
To begin our introduction, we turn to these words from Final Dose themselves:
Descend into a night of mourning, agony and vengeance. Caged in the everlasting dark. Tormented by demons of a cruel past, inescapable mental anguish and the waning throes of life in a cold world.
We offer Under The Eternal Shadow, our second LP and most cohesive vision to date. A blood-pact of our collective influences in old-ways black metal and primitive punk, as well as dungeon synth and folk. Simultaneously our most aggressive and most sonically exploratory work to date.
Within the razor-sharp fury and icy edges of the music we explore a lyrical story of loneliness and affliction. A funerary shroud atop the decayed monuments of this despotic society. There are tormenting demons lurking in the mind and in the confinements of the psyche we are subservient to them. We continue to mourn what we have lost and what we continue to lose as modern days grow colder and crueler. But no matter what this life throws at us, we carry on with clenched fist and gritted teeth.
That quotation identifies those emotional torrents we referred to earlier — feelings of anguish and torment, of loneliness and rage, of grief and a furious defiance — and the new album’s music powerfully channels all of those.
The album’s opening songs bring listeners electrifying intensity in different ways. The opener, “Eternal Winter,” creates striking contrasts. On the one hand, Final Dose inflict brutal pounding and the ring of slashing chords and feverishly swirling notes that channel sweeping calamity and desperation, matched with furious acidic shrieks. On the other hand, they sidestep into punk beats, wild cries, and more fierce and feral riffing, less desperate and bleak and more black-eyed and mean.
In the follower, “Weathered Axe,” the music still punches very, very hard, and the sounds are still a mix of scathing grit and knife-like sharpness. Mid-paced in its momentum, the song picks up from how “Eternal Winter” ended — it’s immediately grim and primitive, oppressive and cruel, still fronted by screaming tirades.
But it changes too, throwing the gates open to fury. Spurred into varying punk gallops, the music wildly careens and brazenly blazes, punctuated by exhilarating drum-fills, and with a throbbing riff in its emotionally dark and physically clobbering conclusion that makes for a sharp hook.
The songs continue to flow into each other (but with some sharp contrasts too). Within almost every one of them the band shift gears and moods. “Rite of Spring” is immediately despondent and then becomes a bonfire of raging defiance — and it introduces valiant clean singing for the first time (they arrive again in “Wretched“). “Servant” flips an even bigger switch, stripping things down to deep and distorted electronic throbs, shrill and demented flickering tones, and the reverberation of caustic and cutting voices, like lethal wraiths.
“Servant” isn’t the only startling detour in the album. “Funeral March” begins with a slow and sorrowing keyboard melody and adds shining synths (and vicious snarls), and the closer “Drag the Light Down” blends corrosive electronics, somber acoustic-folk strumming, and haunting singing in a low register (which is cut off by horrifying howls).
Even within songs that are more in the band’s main line of black and punk, they keep bringing in new ingredients. “Dark Paradise” is a dark and devastating fight, part stomp-and-slash, part sweeping firestorm (and with plenty of big hooks in it too), but it brings in anguished punk vocals as the music becomes tremendously bleak, and then a ringing keyboard melody that adds an aura of dungeon synth mystery and wonder to the finale.
Elsewhere you’ll also encounter vividly rippling lead guitars in the midst of blizzard riffing and blasting drums, or electronic pulses and scratchy chiming notes reminiscent of post-punk melded with gut-slugging and knee-capping beats, mean-streets chords, and woozy and wailing vocals (“Locked in the Black Dungeon“), or shivering haunted-house organ keys above a stomping march (“Revenge“).
That previously mentioned closer does indeed drag the light down; the band’s final word yields no hope. And where the light does shine in this album, it’s most often like the blaze of a Molotov cocktail detonating, not necessarily a triumphant blaze but recurrent signs of a stubborn refusal to yield, despite the equally recurrent signs of desolation.
Well, enough with the words. Here’s the music from an album that has quickly become one of this writer’s favorite records in an already very strong year for new metal.
Wolves of Hades will release the album on April 11th, on LP, CD, MC, and digital formats.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.wolvesofhades.com/search?q=final+dose&type=product
https://wolvesofhades.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-eternal-shadow
FINAL DOSE:
https://finaldose.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/finaldosepunk/