Artist: Black Spine
Title: Akeda
Type: Album
Labels: Dale Of Shadows (physical) / Artist (digital)
I had only the vaguest of awareness of this Swedish, I think one person, pro-nature, anti-human black metal project. That was through a little of their previous debut album ‘Through the collapse of Industrialized Society’. So no real knowledge but it seemed on cursory meeting full of ideas but a little undecided on style perhaps.
Akeda gives an altogether different impression from opener ‘bloodless sacrifice’. It is an urgent, full on black metal attack. The drumming relentless and the riffs direct as the vocals sound both anguished and angry. It’s an excellent start and the next track ‘Sha!’ allows itself to build on that through a slow, doomy opening that surges into a deeper current like some subterranean river of black water. It’s deeply atmospheric and utilises unexpected pools of melody; sometimes somber, other times discordance but always attention holding.
The title track has a beautiful if melancholic introduction, slow grey mist like gradually spreading around you until only the ground upon which you stand is certain. The vocals sound distant, warning or calling is uncertain and I felt bound to the spot. It’s fine, eerily melodic music but raw in feel
A piano interlude in the curiously titled ‘ghetto’, leads in to ‘Betreyal’ with perfectly buried vocals amidst the haunting slow riff and aching melody picked out on top.
And then when you feeling comfortable your jolted by a pulsing but oddly raw goth baseline. ‘Aleyn’. Somehow the guitar seems to stay black metal and the whole is quite mesmeric as it pushing deep back into blacketal.
‘Licht’ by comparison flirts with that post black metal sound; it’s steady drumming but almost gentle melodic riff calling to mind the only bit of post black that ever stays in my heart. The Amesoeurs album.
‘Spiders In The Mouth Of A Christ’ slides into darkness, a slow rises, distant vocals almost whispers. A feeling of real unease is left with you as it fades.
This is an excellent second album. Having gone back to that debut now this is much more focused on the sound Black Spine wants, building on that debut and pushing on with confidence. The flirting with the goth and the post black metal works well for me as the raw, melancholic black metal which feeds it is never absent even in these moments.
Intelligent and intriguing I heartily recommend it.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 