Boy it has been a while since a black metal release has grabbed me. Perhaps it's just everything else I'm listening, my overall mood, or just the fact that it's not quite winter yet. But from first listen, The Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir had me seized firmly in their grasp. Songs From a Dying Empire, which releases today, spends absolutely zero time on anything other than furious, whirling, black metal. The album mixes sounds and ideas from brutal, straight-on, USBM with atmospheric black metal's cold edge, sprinkling in just enough somber melodies from more depressive styles of black metal to create a super compelling work. It swirls between anger, loss, despair, dogged hope, and a bitter denial of our current form of life. Just like good black metal should. Let's dig in!
My favorite track remains the first single I heard from this release, "Peace in Death". I love how it first explodes, letting that main, buzzsaw riff take precedence. Then, slowly at first, a melodic lining is introduced to the riff until it all finally builds up into multiple, heart-wrenching passages soaked in melancholy. That main riff, and the blistering vocals which accompany it, never relinquishes center stage but there is so much going on in the wings. Maybe that's why the release grabbed me so hard; it eschews the single minded approach to composition that often haunts black metal, allowing more ideas and sounds to live alongside its main musical ideas. And then there's that gorgeous outro, which hits like a cold but gentle wind after the storm's fury.
As mentioned, this album dropped today, via the incomparable Fiadh Productions. If, like me, you've been hankering for some black metal to take you by the throat, please click through to the link above to support both the project and the label.