Blood Red Fog / Cosmic Church

Over the past few years, I've come to absolutely adore how strongly Finland has asserted itself as a dominating force in black metal. People harp on and on with their attempts to identify some sort of "third wave" of black metal, but really their quest has been in vain, since the dismal Finns have continued to produce a large amount of extremely high quality stuff since the fires of the second wave were still burning brightly to the west in Nordland. Though the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people regarding Finnish black metal are the more idiosyncratic (and usually older) bands such as Barathrum, Beherit and Impaled Nazarene, these bands are all essentially sonic outliers that don't sound much at all like that so easily identifiable "Finnish" sound, characterized by richly triumphant (yet often melancholic at the same time) tremolo melodies and a sort of punky ethos that often asserts itself both in production values and in the music itself via stomping powerchord riffs and punk drumbeats.

The two main camps in the scene these days are those bands which include (or are satellites of) Shatraug of Horna, Sargeist and about 100 other projects, while the other is a bit more obscure in both fame and sound - that incestuous scene featuring bands like Verge, Saturnian Mist, Charnel Winds, Funerary Bell, Teloch, Utgard and of course Cosmic Church and Blood Red Fog among others. These bands tend to move a bit further away from the Norse-inspired (yet undeniably Finnish) stylings of Shatraug and Pals, and instead tend to put a more esoteric spin on things. While both are distinct entities with different approaches, both bands featured on this split are more akin to Baptism on codeine than to something like Behexen. A fair bit of repetition, mournful contemplation and worship of death, steady driving drumbeats, basslines that aren't afraid to take the melodic lead sometimes.

Arriving during the stopgap periods between the release of both bands' first and second albums, the material here actual differs somewhat from what you might expect (that being, probably, some sort of evolutionary evidence that bridges the styles found on those bookending albums in both bands' discographies). This really isn't the case, though.

Blood Red Fog's tracks here are in nearly the exact same style as the material on their masterful sophomore album, Harvest. Missing are Shu-Ananda's wonderful clean vocal passages, but they're replaced with other bits of mild experimentation and subtle flirtations with the atypical, such as the lead guitar that mimics a rock organ that haunts the incredibly affecting "Wounded" in the first half, before the menacing turnaround that almost sounds like a set of Moog Taurus bass pedals but is really just finely crafted interplay between the traditional instrumentation. That track alone is worth the price of entry; the swirling, cyclic main theme could repeat for ages and never wear out its welcome as far as I'm concerned and ranks among the band's best material (though the other two tracks are quite good as well). If you consider Harvest a masterpiece of the style as I do, you're definitely missing out if you haven't heard these three tracks.

Cosmic Church, on the other hand, use this release as an opportunity to showcase the culmination of the style that had been fermenting throughout the project's early years (i.e. the first album and the Arcana Dei EP series). The band would go on to explore new, and thankfully just as rewarding, territory on their sophomore, so it's really wonderful to hear this single track, which serves as a capstone for Cosmic Church v1.0. At over 21 minutes, this is also the longest track the band have yet released. Meandering, adventurous basslines could almost be described as playful if it weren't for the unrelenting melancholy of it all. Luxixul's pained screeching howls off in the distance while the snowstorm of guitars alternates between sounding not dissimilar to countrymen Virvatulet with nearly hopeful triumph and a desperate, blackened Nordic take on (and I'm dead serious when I say this) something that wouldn't be completely unexpected coming from the guitars on the first couple of Modest Mouse records. It sounds horribly incongruous but I assure you it's not - those sad chords perfectly embody whatever cosmic despair Luxixul's pontificating about in his elf wizard tongue. After going on for roughly the length of a regular Cosmic Church song (i.e. about eleven or twelve minutes), things shift gears ever so slightly, with a somewhat aggressive bridge section featuring frantic tremolo leads, before heading into an extended dirgey final act, spiraling away into backlit nebulae.

As much as I love these two bands, it's only fitting that the split album that they share features some of the stronger material to come from either camp. At the same time, it's an absolute treat to hear how two bands who essentially share the same toolbox and had the same teachers use their skills to construct such powerful pieces that yet are so richly imbued with the unique visions of both band's creative centers (BRF and Luxixul, respectively). Essential listening for fans of either band, but I'd also be hard pressed to think of another release that serves as a better introduction to this sans-Shatraug epicenter of Finnish black metal brilliance.