No Birth nor End

Greek black metallers HOR return with another compact selection of orthodox black metal with their difficult second album entitled ‘No Birth nor End’. Their approach to the form is worth paying attention to if for no other reason than to hear a classic style played with conviction. Both the techniques and overall mood on this release will be very familiar to all and sundry within black metal, but HOR approach it with a level of energy and efficiency that leaves many of their peers far behind.

The production holds few surprises for the black metal faithful. It retains the primal rawness required for a gritty yet stirring piece of black metal, with enough polish to do justice to the tight musicianship on display. The kick drums and toms cut through the mix nicely, offering a decent low end foundation for proceedings in the absence of any other conspicuous bass tones. Guitars are rich and layered, patiently building the tremolo picked riffs on top of each other as each track progresses. Vocals are relatively high in the mix, doing justice to the extroverted performance that serves to greatly elevate the drama on display across this album.

Structurally this follows roughly the same pattern as ‘Exitium’, albeit with a couple of extra tangents along the way. Aside from the track ‘Will to Immortality’ the music is kept at breakneck pace, making austerity of composition a necessity so as not to fall into monotony. Vocalist Throne also maintains a passionate wail throughout which stands apart from the more measured approach usually taken with meat ‘n’ taters black metal.

This raises the stakes for the level of intensity HOR need to maintain, but they are able to refresh the riffs and direction of the music enough to sustain this energy for the length of a short LP. And just with ‘Exitium’, as this album progresses an economy of riffs becomes apparent, with their shape and structure slowly decaying into minimalist versions of themselves. This reaches its ultimate conclusion in the closing track ‘Sibylla’, which switches between two chords over constant blast-beating, with only a couple of transitions into a more complex riff over the course of the track’s eight-minute runtime.

This gradual breakdown of complexity, whilst maintaining the same level of energy grants the album greater longevity, as with hindsight we realise that the opening tracks were building to something despite their apparent lack of forward motion. It’s a clever sleight of hand that HOR are proving to be adept at, smuggling complexity and compositional sophistication beneath the veneer of simplicity, when so often in modern metal we find ourselves saying the opposite.

Originally published at Hate Meditations