Review: Whipping introduction of layered atmospheres meets the nihilistic angular deconstruction of black metal sensu Bathory in this eloquent and vast style of violent metal that alternates its sweeping harmony with a disharmonious reductivism that transforms melody into motion and rhythm for regeneration in a gnostic harvest of glory and resurrection. The light shines through darkness and vice versa in songs which turn ambitious ranting blasts in the Canadian style into atmospheres of diffused focus and paradoxical, chiastic vision. Darkly hoarse vocals in the pure black metal style accompany.
Ripping-strum phrases create beauty in the ability to stay in motion without reaching pointless resolutions or needless derivation, repurposing undulating highspeed riffs from the screaming speed texture lexicon into racing structures which generate radiant continuity in resonance of melody as harmonic expectation and provide a foundation for the atmosphere that leads change in each song. An Immortal influence is present, as well as more esoteric influences in the atmospheric black vein. While instrumentation maintains reasonable work it does not overemphasize. Deft drumming conceives a beat from randomness and works it like a pocket of air through a mainline, pulsing each sides in a carefully unbalanced pattern which works its irregularity into consistency in order to change it.
Thrashing rage patterns hold ground alongside driving lengthier melodies and structural shifts in the dynamicism of each song which allow the development of larger themes in the breakdown and resurrection of themes into new forms. Vocals are strident, soaring, torn-throat consistency and work for primitive rhythm and energy to the sound. One of the few bands holding forth in the old school and continuing the new, Frozen Shadows suffer somewhat from the over-refinement mentality that grips black metal bands trying to compete at this time, but this and the dramatism of epic gothicism in the Emperor style do not distract from the potential in design apparent in this band.
