Linear Black Trees

Romanian black metallers, Cursed Cemetery, have produced the musical equivalent of poorly prepared spare ribs. There was far too much unnecessary "fat" and "bones" that were hard to swallow. And the "meat" that I could find here was enjoyable, but was hard to find. Every song had its share of filler, and one in particular was 100% unneeded in this aspect. Filler is not a word that anyone should want their release that clocks in at forty-seven minutes to labeled as, but alas, Cursed Cemetery are over the deep-end in unnecessarily long songs and repetitive noise.

I'm going to get this simple fact out of the way: I'm not a huge fan of a black metal release that feature songs that are eight minutes long, and half of that song is nothing but ambient noise. Linear Black Trees is the poster child for this kind of release. Some ambient music is nice to listen to, but the majority of the atmospheric material that I heard in these six songs was either annoying, repetitive, or simply lacked substance. Take the track "Morning Mist Reflected in the Green Grass" as an example of this. This track was completely instrumental and was not "metal" in any way. sure, this could have been an interesting addition to a fairly good album, but it was pure torture. Over and over the same sad melody would play on a violin that was piercing in tone, and way too loud in the mix. This would go on and on until the violin stopped playing. It only got worse. A piano concerto of some sort would then play over the violin's melody. Did I mention that said piano concerto was in a different key, and than the violin? It did not match the violin's mood in any way and was quite annoying. Pretty soon noise samples would start to trickle in, and what was left of the song was pure headache fuel.

The only instrumental track that actually worked was "Air Drop." It wasn't terribly interesting, but it was not annoying in any way. Despite that, there was simply too much instrumental and non-metal material here. The beginnings of the title track and "In a Womb Full of Echoes" were not safe either, and in fact, half of both of those songs were taken up by overly-long intros. Perhaps a minute of the ambient material and then seven minutes of actual metal could have been used? It would have worked much better.

I do however, acknowledge the level of creativity and musicianship here. There's something to be said for a group of musicians that can write a classical piano piece, as well as play some interestingly dissonant black metal. if one looks past the irritating nature of the violin part in "Morning Mist Reflected in the Green Grass," the actual piano part that is played is fairly interesting. The metal itself here is quite good too. I especially liked "Astral Neonism as It Drowns." Although this album is black metal, there was a little bit of death metal flair on that particular song that reminded me of Unleashed. One can also hear Cursed Cemetery vocalist, Hex Lecter, sing like Attila Csihar did in Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. I love the way the vocals sound on that album, so this definitely made my listening experience with Linear Black Trees a bit more entertaining. Stylistically, Cursed Cemetery is very eclectic, and they certainly have had a lot of influences in the metal world. I think what will stand out to their listeners on this album is the dissonance that is available everywhere in these six tracks, more so in "Queen of Light and Black Trance," and the different vocal styles used in the whole album.

The production isn't the worst that I've heard on a black metal album, but it definitely wasn't the best either. The atmosphere produced by it was the same dark and unholy one that is so readily available in most black metal. So I guess that was a slight plus to this somewhat mediocre record. That about sums up this album to be honest. Had the instrumental songs been trimmed down, the better songs beefed up, and a bit more metal material been added to the songs themselves, I think that Linear Black Trees would be a great listen. But one can make the most of what is here and enjoy it. I certainly didn't. Except for "Astral Neonism as It Drowns," that song was good.