Heaven-Sent, Charcoal-Grey

Heaven-Sent Charcoal-Grey is one of the single most innovative and unique black metal releases to date that you can luckily stumble upon. Right off the bat this album hits you with a psychedelic haze of fuzzy hypnagogia, and if you don't like that than you shouldn't even bother because the entire album is absolutely drenched in this personally ear pleasing sound. Each track brings something new to the table and never has a dull moment, the songs are always changing and progressing right into something new, often times reinventing itself as just about each track is over ten minutes long.

As stated before the album's entire sound is consistently a thick hypnagogic haze, however the composition throughout the entire release is also sorrowfully surreal, with an abundance of atmospheric and melancholic riffs. To eleborate even further on this I would like to mention how ethereal and dreamlike the production values are, with them helping build the melancholy, while also being akin to a lush wall of sound that washes over your ear drums similarly to the album Sunbather by Deafheaven, but also them being very hypnotic and even triumphant at times in the process like Trhä or Vothana.

During the album many elements are present, such as doom metal, which is the most common element brought up, it is most noticably present in sections of the songs which have plodding repetitive sounds or tempos as they build up the dreamlike atmosphere into another part of the song just to come back harder than before. Although the doom metal influence is mostly heard compositionally is is also surprisingly present in the beautiful and sorrowful clean vocal performances of Iseult, as they remind me of various doom metal projects I've listened to in my past time, such as Woods of Ypres.

Something I would also like to go over is the synth work on this album, which often times elevates the atmosphere into so much more with their surrealistic sound attributes that remind me of music like Trhä, Black Magick SS, Fulgor, Grausamkeit, and even some various 70s psychedelic or electronic music. The sounds that are akin to 70s psychedelic and electronic music are extremely noticeable in tracks like "Blood Is Thicker Than Water" where there is a keyboard solo, but also in the entirely keyboard based outro "Sonata For Two Moogs".

I would highly reccomend this release and any of this artists music to anybody who is a fan of black metal, especially those who are seeking for something more unique or artists that are a bit similar to Trhä, Yvyy, Black Magick SS, Fulgor Grausamkeit, and Drowning the Light.