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Blut aus Nord > Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age > Reviews > RapeTheDead
Blut aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age

boot oust mort - 94%

RapeTheDead, April 25th, 2014

Now that they got all their weird ideas out on the debut (which can still be considered a gorgeous album in its own right, of course), it's time to amp up the intensity. What was a background foundation on Ultima Thulee has been fleshed out in a much more overtly metallic manner, still being rather hale on the surface but throwing plenty of melodies into the mix sounding distinctly French; the shrill fury of the LLN lurks in the underbelly, but there's far too many pretty melodies and the production is far too clean for the resemblance to be considered outright worship. Blut Aus Nord has always been a little more nuanced and careful in their execution than something like Vlad Tepes and a little more ominously melodic and greater in content than something like Mutiilation; that's not to say the band can't venture into the same sort of spooky territories as Meyhna'ch. However, that's mostly to be seen on later albums. Fathers of the Icy Age is just riffs, riffs and did I mention riffs? More riffs than you'll be able to sink your teeth into, and the essence born on Ultima Thulee hasn't been lost. The theme has just been slightly tweaked this time around, but the results are no less captivating.

Due to the emphasis on frenetically throwing riffs at you, there's a distinct focus not seen on Ultima Thulee. No one track is entirely composed of ambiance anymore, the keyboards instead being much more of an accent as opposed to a fully interwoven feature. Fathers of the Icy Age is an album much more comfortable in its own thematic headspace, not quite as comfortable with branching out now but still managing to be diverse and eccentric in its riff attack. The songwriting is much more grounded and though the riffs themselves aren't quite as conventionally black metal sounding as they were on the previous album, Fathers of the Icy Age is probably more likely to appeal to fans of more traditional extreme metal than its predecessor was. By being more comfortable and restrained in his songwriting, Vindsval wrote an album that isn't quite as flashy or immediately mindblowing as the debut was with all its little eccentricities; that being said, Fathers of the Icy Age still manages to hold your attention for the entirety of its duration if you happen to be a riff connoisseur, something I assume everyone reading this review would be.

Blut Aus Nord's style of melody definitively stands out even upon first listen, but articulating exactly what is giving idiosyncracy to this melody is near impossible. The only term I can come up with to barely describe what's going on in a given Blut Aus Nord riff is "consonant dissonance". A melody will begin as though it intended to be pleasurable and euphoric, but there's a strange, abrasive inflection dotting the end of every single riff. It'll drive you to insanity as you wonder why music that sounds so rich and inviting on the surface makes you more and more tense as it carries on. An album like Dialogue with the Stars is a little more overtly pleasant and doesn't have quite as many of those frayed ends on riffs as its sister in the Memoria Vetusta series does, one of the few main differentiating factors between the two albums thematically. On the other side of the spectrum, MoRT plunges much further into the eerie dissonance lining the underbelly of Fathers of the Icy Age. That being so, this album is probably the best album to pick up if you want to hear the most complete statement of what Blut Aus Nord's music is in essence. It synthesizes the two contrasting elements that make up their sound with the most fluency and in the most equal proportions. A connection to any other Blut Aus Nord album can be drawn to this one, however distant it may be.

The added touches of glamour that the keyboards and vocals provide seem much more novel due to their sparsity in use. Giving an abrasive and mystical body to the clearer and cleaner skeleton that the riffs are, Vindsval's rasps are a little easier to decipher the second time around, but still inevitably just come out as a shrill static blur that warbles and pulses in rhythm, buried deep beneath the storm. Clean vocals are even used with great tastefulness, gelling well with some of the more pleasant riffs and lending a triumphant sense of power to the music that gives the music a fresh new edge and flavor. "On the Path of Wolf..." has a couple of instances where the clean vocals are used, sometimes only for a couple of bars, but even that slight saccharine tinge makes everything much more well-rounded. There's a sort of "chaotic romanticism" that goes on in French black metal. Some bands explore the chaotic side of things, others more recently seem to be exploring the romantic side (to the extent that you can't fully call it black metal anymore), but Blut Aus Nord is the only band in this geographic scene that can express both of those mentalities in their music with such presence and conviction and it's the little touches on the greater picture of riffs seen on Fathers of the Icy Age helps to accomplish that.

It's probably not my personal favorite album by this band, but that's more a result of the astounding quality and depth of Blut Aus Nord's discography as opposed to any actual faults present in Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age. Every song has something to it I can dig, and if you're not familiar with this yet, what's your goddamn excuse? You made it to the end of this review, now go listen to this album or download this band's discography or send Vindsval blank cheques with his name on them or something.