My Game Doesn't Have a Name

I’m not entirely sure how A Pregnant Light managed to garner the black metal label, whether it was self-professed or given to him by the media, it’s certainly a strange tag to place upon the music of A Pregnant Light which for the most part has far more to do with post-hardcore and post-punk than anything significantly metal related. However, this is certainly not a hindrance as you can see from my score I really enjoy this album. I just felt the need to clear the genre tag before delving head first into the review.

A Pregnant Light essentially sounds like what Deafheaven should have been, rather than what they are. There’s no atmospheric filler, no absurd running times and absolutely no pretentions. A Pregnant Light is far more willing to admit his connection to the post-hardcore/screamo scenes than Deafheaven could and doesn’t feel the need to hide behind faux black metal elements. Vocally the band reminds me a lot of the notoriously sad screamo group The Saddest Landscape. A very clear shout/scream that sometimes turns into anguished moaning. This style of vocals is certainly divisive, as you can see by scanning the negative reviews of The Saddest Landscape up on rateyourmusic but A Pregnant Light handles this style of vocalisation with a finesse that might surprise you if you are willing to give this album a chance

Discovering this album on the aforementioned rateyourmusic whilst browsing the blackgaze charts one lazy afternoon, I went into this album expecting the usual post rock crescendos and anguished black metal shrieks. The cover art however had me worried however, it’s embarrassing and doesn’t suit the music at all. Despite being tagged as blackgaze however, the band only has minute links to groups such as Amesoeurs and Lantlos. A Pregnant Light certainly has the whole sad industrial vibe nailed pretty damn well but the anguish and anger comes across as being more of a screamo and emo angle rather than anything to do with black metal.

The music presented to us on My Game Doesn’t Have A Name is delightfully unique and belongs to a growing number of releases that mix black metal with hardcore. The projects sense of melody is very good and is most definitely original in the niche that this guy has carved for himself. Dream Addict starts off with an almost poppy melody which seems influenced by Green Day before diving into some Touche Amore inspired screamo. There’s a hell of a lot of passion on this album, from the desperate melodies to the powerful screaming, A Pregnant Light is able to convey emotions much better than what I would have expected. For that I applaud him.

What black metal elements there are work well within the context of the music. The blasting sections, whilst not as aggressive as Darkthrone, Gorgoroth or even Lunar Aurora make a nice departure from the more downbeat nature of the rest of the album. It’s a good change for an album that does have the tendency to become one dimensional. Variety is not something this album has nailed but truth be told I don’t think it needs diversity. The album is good enough in its chosen niche that if the artist decided to add more diverse influences and ideas I don’t believe it would have paid off all too well.

My Game Doesn’t Have A Name is an interesting listen and would that should appeal to a wide array of listeners. The music conjures up enough atmosphere and emotion throughout its running time to remain interesting and there is enough good riffs and catchy vocal lines to keep me hooked throughout. Definitely a band to keep an eye out. I will be eagerly anticipating the arrival of his next full length.

Though this album, after a brief intro, kicks off with tremolo and blast beating, anybody approaching My Game Doesn't Have A Name in hopes of listening to a black metal album will be about as disappointed as somebody listening to Skitsystem in search of death metal. There's a tangible thread of black metal present throughout this album, but by and large, the music straddles the boundary between post-punk and post-hardcore; at least half the riffs wouldn't sound out of place on an early Siouxsie and the Banshees album with little to no alteration. Damian Master (who has taken up the pseudonym 'Deathless Maranatha' for the purposes of his work on A Pregnant Light) has dubbed this post-punk/post-hardcore hybrid with black metal inflections 'purple metal', which is about as pretentious a title as any other genre created, named, and played by exactly one band, but I certainly won't complain if other bands take after A Pregnant Light's example on this album and take up the purple metal banner, because My Game Doesn't Have A Name is pretty damn good.

Even the sections of songs that more clearly reflect the black metal influence-- when the drums start blasting and the guitars surge up in densely layered tremolo melodies-- don't really feel like black metal; even then, the music has a very clear post-punk aesthetic to it. The blasts are never particularly fast or hard-hitting, and the tremolo riffs feel more ruminative than aggressive. They aren't really where this album shines, though: My Game Doesn't Have A Name truly hits its stride when it introduces the melodic lead guitar lines over rockin' post-punk drum beats and backing guitar power chords. Damian Master definitely knows how to craft a memorable, striking lead part, and how to back it up properly with the other instruments to really give those leads the extra presence they need-- it's particularly effective when the music builds up tension and then releases it through the leads; the lead break about halfway through Born to Ruin is a perfect example of that. They're the culmination of the album's emotional charge-- at once beautiful, melancholic, and wistful, sort of like reminiscing on past memories both pleasant and sorrowful; that's the sort of atmosphere the album seems to be aiming for, both in the music and in the lyrics, and by and large it succeeds in evoking that sentiment.

He also knows how to write bass riffs that nicely accentuate and complement the guitars without simply clinging to them note for note; the bass here doesn't just have a distinct presence, it also doesn't shy away from asserting its voice in the music. Sometimes it even assumes precedence over the guitar riffs and takes the lead-- this can be heard most prominently throughout Endless // Infinite // Eternal, or during the clean vocal section in My Days in Nights And You.

Yep, that's right-- though Damian Master's vocals primarily manifest in an emotionally driven, distinctly post-hardcore shout, with little of black metal's raspy venom to be found, but every now and then, he delves into bouts of mid-range singing. Though generally employed solely as complements to the hardcore shouts, they're competently executed, and certainly don't fail to satisfy when they take to the forefront, such as in the beginning of You Cut Me From A Magazine I Didn't Know That I Was In (which, aside from sharing post-hardcore's occasional inclination for agonisingly pretentious and overlong song names, also boasts a nice little twist in its acoustic intro). Despite their emotional inflection, the shouts can start to sound a little samey over the course of the album (there's like... one second on My Days In Nights and You where one of the shouts tapers off into something like a black metal rasp), but the vocal patterns, which are well-arranged and lend themselves well to the rhythm of the music, save them from suffering too badly on that count.

But it can't be said the album is aces all around, and most of that comes down to one tendency that is all too often crippling: sometimes, the album just fucking drags. Endless // Infinite // Eternal in its entirety is a massive offender on this front-- the intro drags on for two minutes, and when the actual songs kicks in, it's a fucking minute and a half of riffing that is devoid of the striking leads that make the rest of the album so great, followed by another two minutes of the exact same excruciatingly boring intro you were just pleased the song was finally leaving behind. After the intensity and the momentum of the first three songs' opening salvo, Endless // Infinite // Eternal knocks the album flat on its ass and then forcibly holds it down there, leaving My Days In Nights and You to pick it back up and try to get the momentum going again. Purple Light, meanwhile, is pretty much just four minutes of outro rather than an actual song, and though it may be purely personal preference kicking in, I don't see the merit in tacking on four minutes of the same chords played over and over again with some spoken word layered on top of it.

So that's two entire songs lost to the album's bad dragging habit, two entire songs that injure the album just by existing: that doesn't mean the album doesn't also drag from time to time on otherwise decent songs. Take the riff from 1:08 to 2:08 on Born to Ruin: sure, it does what it's supposed to (builds tension for the upcoming lead break), but it really doesn't need an entire minute to itself to accomplish that. These intermittent examples of the album's tendency to drag aren't as egregious as two entire songs that do nothing but drag, and they won't exactly kill the album, but they aren't doing the album any favours when they could easily do what they're there to do in half the time they're being played.

Once they come and go, however, what you're left with is still an album that succeeds at threading a touch of black metal into a post punk patchwork in a way that's satisfying to listen to. I'd guess it's more likely to appeal to fans of the latter style than the former, because though they're billed as post-black metal (itself a pretty nebulously defined genre), A Pregnant Light, at least on this release, really aren't black metal at all. That doesn't mean it isn't worth listening to, of course, even for folks who do prefer black metal. It's certainly made a purple metal fan out of me.