Of Beatings and the Silence in Between

Lately, Finland has seen a new wave of bands that play different combinations of death, black and thrash metal. The ratios of the ingredients vary, but usually the death metal part is more or less prominent. Chthonian, blessed with a name that should have been used a dozen times before by different metal outfits all over the world, yet has stayed pristine so surprisingly long, serves a platter of death and black, leaning heavily towards the death part. For a first-timer in the world of full-lengths, the band does an excellent job.

The music, roughly 75% death metal, is fundamentally the standard death metal fare, with a lot of tempo changes, heavy emphasis on riffs, and coarse shouted/growled vocals. The black part is not very noticeable at first, but something in the riffing and the general atmosphere hints at something darker lurking in the background, and repeated spins gradually uncover it. The excellently fleshy and thick production tends to hide the black metal influence, however, and nowhere on the album does the run-of-the-mill black metal dryness break through. All the way through the music feels like being smacked repeatedly by a score of seven-pound T-bone steaks covered with a smoky BBQ sauce and with the cut ends of the bones sometimes sticking out.

The album is short enough to straddle the fine line between an EP and a full-length. At a little more than 27 minutes of total lenght, the shortness of the eight tracks means that the payload must be really effective. Fortunately, the album allows very little breathing space, and even with the tempo changes, the average speed stays well above comfortable. Neither does Chthonian slip into grind at any point. The blast beat parts are mercifully short and done with good taste instead of mindless onslaught, and the riffing goes on uninterrupted for the duration of the album.

The atmosphere of the album is perhaps the biggest nod to the direction of black metal. There is aggression and violence - indeed, plenty of aggression and violence - but still the mixture manages to keep the atmosphere somehow enjoyably ominous. No matter how hard they pound away, there is a feeling that makes the listener expect something worse, something more evil and less forgiving. Maybe it's the almost undistorted second guitar occasionally floating over the riffing, maybe the tempo changes that seem to offer a relaxing moment, only to nab it away right after the promise has been made by hitting with a new riff or a brief blastbeat. Or, perhaps, it's the audible ease of playing that almost testifies that the band is quite not yet working on their outer limits, and that there may still be some unused reserves of brutality to be tapped.

All in all, Of Beatings and the Silence in Between is a fine piece of death metal with a pitch black coating, but not any kind of crossover in search of an uninhabited niche somewhere; it's a honest piece of uncompromising metal. The professional playing is on par with the excellent production and good songwriting; the tracks may perhaps be a little too similar to tell apart, but the fundamentally important basics are there, mortared together with a promise of a bright future. There's nothing highly innovative and original in the songs, but the offering is very solid, and undoubtedly fits the tastes of fans of newer death metal. The band's next album will certainly be worth waiting for.

As a sidenote, the album might also serve as a redeeming piece of art for an artist: Mathias Lillmåns, today the vocalist of Finntroll, might not instantly summon mental images of a true metal musician, but on Of Beatings and the Silence in Between, he proves that there's more to him than just a guy who replaced the singer of a goofy folk metal outfit three and a half times his weight. This is real metal, and even pretty good in that. Recommended.