Artist: Eowa
Title: The Year Without A Summer
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Matriarch Records
Eowa are a relatively new UK project and this album, originally self released in 2023, has been remixed and remastered, and given a physical release too under Matriarch Records. And it is intriguing too; a concept album about the 1816 volcanic winter throughout Europe caused by the eruption of Mt Tambora in Indonesia. Just about the most black metal history concept since Written In Torment’s ‘Black Command’ about the strange attempt to burn down York Minster.
Six tracks exploring the eruption and consequences.
‘Under The Red Sun’ begins with a rumble of noise and a deep, heavy riff that coughs and chugs on that ledge of black metal with doom and death on either side. It is a great sound too; the vocals are strong, snarling black metal, the tone of the riff is like pressure building. “A violent climax spitting ashes. Blackening winds; Its funnel pours…”It builds the pressure, the speed and the feel of the irresistible force from below beautifully and engulfs you. ‘The Blighted’ is a harsher, sharper bit of black metal as the lyrics describe the desolation wrought. The sun blocked, the cold, the famine and the pestilence following hand in hand with the violence of desperation. With the tremelo melody above like the skittering of rats and mites above and the riff a deep black river of misery pushing ever onwards.
‘Roots Encased In frost’ brings a superb bassline to the forefront which really works as the skeletal riff plays in the background before all coming together into the grey doom of the unceasing winter. ‘A year without summer dooms us all. No food to share, no life to practice. A world that’s rotten…’ The mood is as bleak as the lyrics; a relentless riff but with enough shifts, like the freezing wind, to keep your mind hooked. A fine guitar break and that bass back once more. ‘Acidic Monsoons’ tells of the rain, infected with the breath of the volcano, falling and offering no comfort. Only rot and death. The drumming pounds like the torrents, the doomy riff plods on heavy with mud and the guiter runds like black, sickly wtaer flowing over once fertile ground. It is genuinely evocative. Grim and unrelenting yes but the mood created is something I find myself unable to break free from.
‘Bread Or Blood’. They told us no when we begged like dogs… is the death rattle. Whe there is nothing left but anger and the last energy explodes. This is a snarling biting mid paced piece, the vocals which are nicely varied throughout the album here have that saliva dripping snarl to them, coughing and barking out words and the march of the riff merciless and heavy on the death tinged sound.
We are left with the incredible ‘In Search Of New Soil’. There is an urgent, beautiful but dark introduction, veering into that original sound that Amesoeurs crafted of bass bordering on urgent goth, or early Solefald circa The Linear Scaffold, before it is swallowed by the black metal though that insistent melody somehow survives. The drums bring a rumble; powerful and pushing us onwards, the melody with new purpose. The lyrics speak of barrent land but rumours of better to the West. And so we go on, refusing to die. This track with that dark, pulsating melody, huge variation and a sense of desperation gathering purpose is just a magnificent end to the album and I am absolutely fascinated to see where Eowa go with this sound.
Relentless, dark, grim and bleak but also in that incredible ending displaying a sense of purpose and looking out across the black metal landscape to where the band themselves can take, twist and turn this sound. Remarkable.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 