Manes
Review: Majestic in the way only black metal can be, this release combines the playful child of imagination with solid foundations in the building of epic structure and manipulation of textures of tone for the creation of ambiguous harmonic states of multiple themes moving in different directions, as if a streetfight fugue, emphasizing a space of epic adventure where the most basic differences in similarities in objects are used to link complex structures through details resonant to less than immediately visible core compositional principles.
Instrumentalism, refined and precise, is poised over each track here executed with an accuracy cutting to the core of the music. Developments in song follow melodic expectations as developed around themes reflecting conquest of change and individual emotional immersion in the unbalanced equilibrium of sensations possible upon percieving the world. Progressive rock influences in the psychedelic vault of atmosphere manipulated by Pink Floyd or King Crimson layer complexity within change to fill depth within experience.
Mature in thematic development and deliberate in its growth, the fantastic voyage into subconscious desire attempted here unleashes its expansion as an organic expulsion in the same delicate grace in explosivity that a volcano eruption or seedling root splitting concrete, with rhythms gently cruising a wavelike upsurge and recurrence or unfolding outward with speed to detour with grace to a point of structural foundation, exhibits in poetic unselfconsciousness. Harsh whispers of vocals with little inflection but occasional interjections of great power support the forward motion in drums, bass and guitar; strings ride percussion which in turn gently supports them in the broadest sense possible while maintaining precision for an open stratospheric backing to divergent melodic themes.
Trademark Nordic elements accumulate in self-fusing dissonant riffs and internal melody through arpeggiated strumming yet the style of this release remains its own: independent, joyful, moribund and exploratory. The rock elements and theatricism that periodically intrude are slight in effect, allowing the melodic voice of this epic venture to speak clearly the darkness and strength of individualistic feralism.