AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VERITERAS — “THE DARK HORIZON”

Sometimes a relatively new band’s love for a relatively old and well-established brand of music is so evident that it runs the serious risk of having nothing new to say. The risk exists even when the love is genuinely earnest and not a cash grab (though about the only cash-grabbing most underground metal bands are capable of achieving is by looking for lost coins in the crevices of couches).

The relatively new Seattle band Veriteras wear their love for old-school Scandinavian melodic death metal on their sleeves, and it is clearly an earnest and genuine love, with the influence of such bands as early In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Kalmah reverently embroidered on such sleeves.

So, the question arises: Do they have something new to say, and if so, what is it? The answer arrives in their second album, The Dark Horizon, which we’re premiering today in advance of its April 11th release.

photo by J. Donovan Malley

Calling Veriteras “relatively new” doesn’t mean “brand new”, but relative to the vintage of those bands mentioned above. Veriteras have been around since about 2019, and released their debut album Shadow of Death back in 2022, following a pair of EPs.

Although a long seven years have elapsed since that first album, with no other releases filling the gap, the original lineup has remained intact, and they haven’t wavered dramatically in what interests them musically. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stood still across those intervening years. Instead, they’ve gotten better at just about every aspect of what they’re doing, from the flair and dynamism of the songwriting to the sharpness of the execution.

Melody is still a core ingredient, crafted and carried with electrifying effect by the band’s dual guitarists Santtu Winter and Sean Osterberg. The high whirring trill of their harmonized riffing seizes attention in every song, vibrating with high voltage but morphing in ways that create striking changes of mood.

That tremolo’d whir of the riffing style, usually rendered in brilliant piercing tones, is a distinctive feature of the new songs (though as you’ll see, it’s not the only stand-out feature of the guitar work), judiciously aided by shining keys. But another distinctive feature is the sheer savagery of the music’s other ingredients (because Veriteras don’t forget that what they’re doing is a variant of death metal, with all its ravaging hostility).

The savagery manifests itself in bone-smashing drumwork by Jason Gooselaw that also erupts in blistering fusillades and detonates like megaton bombs, Major Bruno‘s gut-punching and molten bass-lines, and most especially in Sean Osterberg‘s rabidly unhinged screams. Or to put it another way, the songs are often segmented by grooves that seem hard enough to bring the roof down but also explode in decimating high-speed barrages with “blackening” in the mix, and with raging berserker vocals in the vanguard (along with some dour spoken words in the music’s gloomier moments).

And yes, there’s grimness and gloom in some of these songs, too, a darkness that intrudes like the solar eclipse that’s occurring today, a melodic throttling of delirium as the guitars quell their electrifying jubilation in favor of tension, bleakness, and splintering anguish. Sometimes they accomplish this by descending into a more forlorn or dismal range, even when still vibrating.

The melodic moods also change even when the band are moving at full throttle (which is their dominant speed). At times the notes dance and dart in sheer exultation, at others they swirl and whirl in joy, almost like old pagan dances where all life’s cares are left behind.

Also in the mix are gleaming chords that sound like glorious heroic fanfares, as in “Last Rites”, where heroic singing briefly joins in, as well as exhilarating soloing in such songs as “Sanctuary” (performed in part by Eligio Tapia) and “Blinding” (performed by Adonis Reed-Boulos) that will put your heart in your throat. (Singing arrives again in the closing track, harmonized singing in which the band’s guest Maria Mannisto joins in).

Reflecting on the album as a whole, it has a mythic atmosphere, often heroic, ancient, and barbaric, sometimes folk-ish and sometimes elegant and sometimes bombastic. It pounds the pulse so hard you might think your heart’s going to burst out of your chest, and the dual-guitar melodies hearken back to the golden age of Scandinavian melodeath with such splendor that you could easily imagine crowds shooting their hands heavenward, carried away.

So to return to the question: Do Veriteras have something new to say? Each listener will of course answer that question for themselves. But for this listener, who found the doorway to extreme metal through the early years of the bands that influenced this one, I found the experience not merely a piece of beautiful nostalgia, but also so explosively powerful, so head-spinning, so mood-moving, and so memorable that it seemed like I was experiencing this kind of music for the first time (again).

 

 

The Dark Horizon was recorded by Don Gunn at The Office Studio in Seattle, and it was mixed and mastered by the legend Dan Swanö at Unisound Studio.

The Dark Horizon features cover art by Sean Osterberg. It’s available for pre-order now on CD and digital formats, with related apparel.

PRE-ORDER:
https://veriteras.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-horizon

FOLLOW VERITERAS:
https://www.facebook.com/VeriterasMetal/