The idea of an album/EP being one entire song isn’t an entirely new idea in metal (considering it’s been twenty years since Edge of Sanity’s Crimson among other releases), but it’s an idea that’s starting to resurface in a plethora of new and intriguing ways. This year alone we have Nadja doing just that, blending metal and ambient/electronic music until neither are distinguishable with their new album Sv, along with Gorguts and their new Pleiades Dust EP.
Boise, Idaho’s Wolvserpent is using this same concept of a one track album in their latest release, Aporia:Kāla:Ananta. Strange title, right? Don’t ask me what it means, because I’m clueless on that. However, the music on the album is another deal. We’re talking about AOTY material here, guys; Wolvserpent mixes basically everything black metal has been doing lately into one beautiful heap with this album, covering all the major stones from blackgaze to symphonic black metal to folk-influenced BM and everything in between.
You probably want comparisons, which, as always, are not exact, but give a pretty good idea of what to expect. Frankly, there is no band even close to this in my opinion (except maybe Nadja), but if Sarah Neufeld, Forndom, early Abigail Williams, Nadja, Zeit-era Tangerine Dream and maybe even Rosetta got into one huge musical fistfight, this is what you’d probably get as a result. This album is devastatingly beautiful, through both its elements of metal—which are very prevalent if you listen to the entire forty minutes of Aporia:Kāla:Ananta—and the random folk, electronic, and symphonic elements that are included.
One caveat, though: this is a piece that requires an entire sit-down to listen to. Don’t expect things to explode into metal off the bat; Wolvserpent puts a lot of work into slowly shifting into that phase of metal. However, with a little patience (if you’re like me and are privy to skip forward until something “exciting happens”), this is a great, rewarding listen.