Travesty of Heavenly Essence

Thyrane is beautiful. Roughly two years ago I found the Black Harmony EP, and it became the gateway drug I needed to appreciate black metal. Now I have all their works, after a bit of searching. Thyrane's discography is good, in both of its ends. It's just the slumping middle part of the series that provides some mild suction, and unlike so many others, even that doesn't quite manage to suck the marrow out of the listener's bones. Travesty of Heavenly Essence is a necessary step backwards, and an exceptionally beautiful, graceful step at that.

Let us consider a random band's average career as a straight line. Let's imagine a band starts with many original innovations and all-out force, and scores a perfect 100% on its first album. The fourth, and last, album is a tired and forced disc meant more to fulfill the contract with the record company than to succeed, and is worth just 25%. Doesn't this, without any further knowledge about the band, make you assume that the second and third albums most probably are worth 75% and 50%, respectively? Right, I thought so, you'd make a good engineer.

The Spirit of Rebellion in between the Black Harmony and Hypnotic was a small step in the direction of the later industrialism. It wasn't real black metal anymore, but something floating in a strange Bermuda triangle defined by three virtual fortified islands of "Black", "Death" and "Industrial", on the spot where a ship called "Behemothica" carrying scrap thrash metal had just been sunk. And thus, from Black Harmony (90%), through Spirit of Rebellion (~80%), to Hypnotic (~55%), we find a trendline that unavoidably shows us that Symphonies of Infernality simply must be an excellent product in the vicinity of 85%. The proof is statistical, but lands us surprisingly close to the correct percentage.

Sometimes, however, trendlines bend, break, or lie outright. That, fortunately, happens right here with Thyrane. Instead of the pseudo-statistically extrapolated 35% piece of electric poop, the band treats us with an unexpected step backwards, and the trendline snaps like a collarbone with ostheoporosis during greco-roman wrestling finals in a nursing home. Thyrane ditches most (but not quite all) of the industrial aspects, and returns surprisingly close to the original blackness. I am SO happy for the ordinance that led to this, whatever and by whomever it was.

What Thyrane has done is a return to the black aesthetics, but with a modernized sound. The dry Black Harmony era sound has turned into a beefy, more symphonic slab of meat, and every now and then it could even be from a fleshy medium-paced death metal album with synths. The result is very good and pleasing to listen, but lacks some of the mean drive that makes Black Harmony such a masterpiece.

The songwriting has moved back, too. Travesty is close to Black Harmony, but with more tempo changes, and maybe a bit more weight on the synths. There's blasting and coarse vocals, and the result, when combined with the improved soundscape, is rewarding. The band still manages to avoid the overuse of keyboards, and the metal remains guitar-driven, just like good metal should be.

What can we learn from Thyrane's eight-year voyage? A lot, definitely. One day there might be a time for each of us to look upon the results of our labour, and see the point in the decision tree that led us to hang on the wrong branch. It takes truckload of guts and humility to descend back and redirect the work to the direction that should have been the road ahead all the time. Only great spirits manage that, instead of boneheadedly sticking to the recipe that has already been proven wrong; maybe bands such as Slayer could one day see the light, too, however unlikely it might be in the real world. All this could perhaps be compared to linedancing, the suckiest of all sucky hobbies ever invented by mankind: unless you take the necessary steps backwards every once in a while, you either eventually hit the opposite wall, unless you dance alone in a big, empty hall with plenty of space and nobody watching. And linedancing with your face smashed against the gym wall is, if possible, even more embarrassing than just linedancing, it just shows you're an idiot in addition to having a poor taste in choosing hobbies.

I can only offer my belated congratulations to Thyrane for the brave new return to the old. It may come too late, but in case the band ever decides to reform, Travesty will make it worthwhile.