Unravel

Everything about Unravel seemed very appealing from the outside: The artwork, concept, song titles, and the fact that Gehenna had proven its quality with a streak of six consecutive good albums. For some reason, however, I never listened to it. Not that I didn’t want to, but I just assumed the album was probably as good as the others and since I’m not a die-hard fan of the band I didn’t really feel the need of listening to it right away.

Alas, the moment finally came when I was blasting “Adimiron Black” in the car and decided it was a good day to give Unravel a try, after all those years, only to have my expectations utterly shattered.

The problem with Unravel is a serious one and has nothing to do with production, execution, or even musical direction; it all comes to the songwriting itself, and the amateurish sound that permeates throughout the whole album. “Uninspired” and “boring” are some of the adjectives used to describe a band that has reached that point where everything they seem to release sounds generic, but Gehenna somehow managed to take it even further this time around and delivered 40 minutes of riffs that could have easily been written by a group of wannabes trying to sound “trve” and “evil”. That really bothers me considering that Gehenna are no amateurs, but a veteran black metal band that have been delivering quality since the 90s and could’ve been considered part of the Norwegian second wave if not for the fact that they always seem to go under the radar.

There are 2 types of songs that make up the album: the slower paced, doomy ones and the fast paced, traditional black metal ones. Not that they go bad together, specially because they are interspersed and at least give some dynamism to the album, but all of them suffer equally from those amateurish, uninspired vibes. None of the riffs are particularly catchy, let alone memorable, except maybe for the ones in The Decision and the one around minute 2:20 in A Grave of Thoughts. For the most part, songs consist of one or two, maybe even three riffs but with no variations or additions whatsoever; they are just presented one after another and disappear in the same way. No thought went into the songwriting and structure and all of this becomes evident as soon as you reach the second track in the album and until the very end of the album.

The drum work is bland and boring; the blast beats are delivered in the most apathetic way possible (at this point, better use a drum machine) and I can’t recall listening to a single drum fill or ornament. Guitars follow the same rule, delivering the fast riffs with a soulless tremolo picking. The atmospheric riffs, however, have a little more substance in them, and production helps a bit delivering a haunting sound, but it would have been better if the riffs themselves were actually good.

There are a couple of redeeming factors: The album is not necessarily awful and can even be listened as background music when one doesn’t want to focus that much on the music. The opening track is great, and the aforementioned riff in A Grave of Thoughts stood out for me. The artwork chosen as the cover is terrific, but it feels like a waste; it deserved much better.

I really wanted to like this album, but now I must accept with that bitter stain in the band’s discography, hoping that when they break their 8-year silence to this date, they can redeem themselves from this disappointment. Until then, I’ll stick with The Spells.

Highlights: The Decision.