Atmospheric and post-black metal are difficult genres to do well. Many bands toil in relative obscurity at the bottom of the barrel, offering meandering soundscapes and tired tremolo runs just as likely to make the attention wander or inspire an occasional lukewarm, head bob as they are to actually put the listener to sleep. British upstarts Ba’al manage to rise above these throngs of mediocrity on their sophomore album The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here, remaining firmly rooted in post-black, but diverging into doom-metal, post-metal, and even some death-adjacent riffing.
Ba’al have wrought a memorable if lengthy work of riffy, interesting music here, coming off a promising debut album in 2020 and an EP last year. The Sheffield four-piece create a varied and lush soundscape, aided by Joe Clayton’s great production job. Spearheaded by multi-faceted vocals which range from shredding, high pitched screams to a commanding death-roar and beautifully broken, despondent cleans, the surprisingly muscular guitars and bass and understated but fitting percussive pounding are bolstered by synth and string work—the latter of which really drive home the plaintive moments on this latest album.
Those moments first rear their tear-stricken head on lengthy opener “Mother’s Concrete Womb”, where the clouds break around the 8 minute mark, and the songs opens up into a beautifully executed acoustic guitar part, over which vocalist Joe Stamps honors his surname as he crushes the heart with broken-up, DSBM-adjacent cleans that slowly creep into the harsher territory before the song crescendos into a typical but well executed post-black climax. Album highlights and singles “Floral Cairn” and “Well of Sorrows” show Ba’al at their most dynamic and energetic, moving from panic-chord driven, deathy riffing to scorching screams and tremolos. The former track takes a wistful guitar and strings part around the three minute mark and smashes headlong into a very headbangable riff section, before suckling at the tear-ducts with another excellent batch of despondent clean-ish vocals by Stamps.
It’s not all flowery gravestones and silver-dappled glory though. Although it is admittedly a staple of the genre, I do feel that some of the songs and especially the atmospheric intros could have been pruned a bit to make both the flowers and the thorns stand out even more. “Waxwork Gorgon” hasn’t managed to really grab my attention, and while the second half of “The Ocean that Fills a Wound” is home to another great riff, and its first half has a nice bassline and some tranquil vibes that nicely lead in the heavier sections, it would blossom more convincingly with a slightly shorter runtime. This type of music (like all metal) lives and dies by the riff, and while that is of course a matter of taste when not every riff sinks the hooks in the album’s runtime starts to take its toll more noticeably.
Nevertheless, the second half of “Well of Sorrows” really shows what Ba’al are capable of when forlorn stars align. After setting the mood with its intro and first half, through strong riffing that oscillates between melodic black tremolo work and punchy chuggery, the track majestically sails into the eye of the storm around the five minute mark. Stamps delights once more, as the song erupts into an absolute winner of a riff, punctuated by a raspy vocal assault before slowing down into melodic death-doom territory. The expertise and seeming ease with which they tie together disparate styles of extreme metal, never sacrificing either heft or emotion belies their relative youth and lack of recognition in the scene, and as “Well of Sorrows” envelops the listener in one glorious riff after the next, I am highly optimistic about this band’s future. I wholeheartedly recommend this album to anyone who will give these Brits of bale and brawn a chance to claim an hour of their time. Sit back and let Ba’al both comfort and surprise you with meaty yet melancholic musical escapades.