The Blessing

I’ll be honest, when I first listened to this tape I didn’t think it was that great, however, on more recently listens I have grown to really enjoy it. Also, when I say black metal/noise, I don’t mean black metal that is saw raw it becomes noise. I mean a mixture of black metal and harsh noise. For example, the second song on this tape “Suffer” is entirely harsh noise without much of any metal influence.

The music on this demo consists of somewhat melodic black metal with fairly raw production, with a few noise sections as well. The black metal sections, even though they are harsh, use quite beautiful chord progressions over simple blasting drums that form the basis of the music. One thing to note about the drums, is that it seems the drummer had the snares on his snare drum off, so it almost sounds like he’s using a tom instead of a snare, which I think gives the drumming a very organic sound. This, combined with the emotional, indecipherable howled vocals gives the songs on this demo a fairly bleak atmosphere. However, the songs remain strangely uplifting because of the beauty of the chord progressions. The combination of these melodies with the raw production makes this demo stand out somewhat from other atmospheric black metal groups

The noise sections on this release are very harsh and non-melodic. Sometimes vocals are used, but instead of the howled vocals from other tracks, these seem to be almost spoken word, except layered in effects. The track “Suffer” uses these main elements to create a very apocalyptic feel, like one is standing in the middle of abandoned, war-torn streets.

Even though it took me a while to really get into this demo, it has now worked it’s way into my regular playlist, and I would highly recommend it for those into the more atmospheric forms of black metal.