Bandcamp The homework is real
Scott Ferguson and Mike Connors say they spent years reading and arguing about the Grimdark universe before a note of this existed, and that the concept was finished before the writing started. Bands say that sort of thing all the time. The difference here is that you can hear it: five tracks that behave like chapters rather than like songs assembled into a running order, with titles that read as stations on a route.
They also say this is their debut in atmospheric black metal after years together in a traditional black metal band, and that is audible too. The playing has the tightness of people who already know each other’s habits, which is not something most debuts have.
The sound of a duo that has decided
The record is brighter than the genre usually allows itself, with a consistent fifth of its energy sitting above five kilohertz, and that is the most interesting production choice on it. Atmospheric black metal tends to bury the top end under reverb until the whole thing reads as weather. This does the opposite: the tremolo picking stays legible, the cymbals keep their edge, and the result is cold in a hard way rather than a misty one.
Where I part company with it is the level. The peaks sit only around eleven decibels clear of the average across all five tracks, which is the modern ceiling, and on a record this committed to atmosphere that costs something. “Miasmic Dipsomania” is the exception and the best thing here, opening up nearly twice as far between its quiet and loud passages as its neighbours, and it is no accident that it is also the track where the arrangement feels like it is going somewhere rather than sustaining.
“Behold, The Crimson Path” and “Eternal Rites of The Lost” sit at the other end, the two most tightly held pieces, and they are where a five track album starts to feel longer than it is. The closer does introduce synth and a drift toward ambient at the end, which is the one moment the record steps outside its own weather.
The frame
Marcio Blasphemator’s painting is loose where the music is tight: a hooded figure with a scythe built out of pink and ochre impasto, dissolving into a nebula, two dark planets off to the right. It looks painted rather than rendered, brushwork visible, and for a record about formless things that is the right instinct. It also tells you this is science fiction before the word Grimdark appears anywhere.
Plainly, then: this is worth your time, with caveats. It is a confident debut from people who clearly did the reading, and the brightness is a genuine decision rather than an accident. The caveat is that four of the five tracks hold one shape, and a master this tight gives them nowhere to go when they want to lift. Start with “Miasmic Dipsomania” and you will hear what the band can do when they let the arrangement breathe.
Five tracks with an unusually consistent fingerprint: their levels land within a decibel and a half of each other, their tonal centres inside about two hundred hertz, and all five carry close to a fifth of their energy above five kilohertz, which is bright for atmospheric black metal and keeps the tremolo work from dissolving into wash. The mastering is the constraint. Peaks sit around eleven decibels above the average throughout, which is squarely at the modern ceiling, so the loud passages have very little room above them. “Miasmic Dipsomania” is the outlier in the useful direction, running roughly twice the span between its softest and loudest passages that “Behold, The Crimson Path” and “Eternal Rites of The Lost” manage. Those two are the flattest pieces here by that measure, and they sit at the points where the album feels least like it is moving.
Standout tracks: Miasmic Dipsomania, Through The Eternity Stairs
