Eminence

With the emergence of Ultra Silvum and Sühnopfer, Ungfell’s newfound mojo on their latest album ‘Es Grauet’, and now this slab of noise from the Russian outfit known as Passeisme, I’m calling it, we’re seeing a new wave of highly melodic riff based black metal. But unlike the first wave in the 90s from Sacramentum, Dawn, and Vinterland et al., the characters making up this new generation seem fixated on sonic density. Gone are the broad sweeping narratives of old, formed of elongated melodic threads. Today the aim is to create a rush of momentary micro riffs that sweep by in a blaze of speed and excitement. It’s not that one approach is inherently superior (although ‘Far Away from the Sun’ will remain a genre benchmark), it’s just that the modern approach is less obviously narrative in structure owing to its fixation on the present moment, dispensing of riffs as quickly as they are introduced. But as each track progresses there is a cumulative affect that could be called a narrative.

On their debut album ‘Eminence’, Passeisme’s approach is intense even by the standards of the genre. Everything is kept in a state of fraught high-drama. From the strained melodic intricacies inherent to the medieval inflections couched within riffs that are already choppy and challenging to the follow closely. To the oddly guttural, hardcore vocalisations that lend each piece an expressive tension, as if the messages conveyed are of the upmost urgency. To the drums, that offer a non-stop cavalcade of blast-beats and shifting fills, giving the impression that the very foundations of this music were built on a highly unstable fault line. The bass thunders away alongside the drums, adopting a slightly distorted tone which works well as an acting rhythm guitar. A necessary choice in this context given that both guitar lines stick to the higher end, weaving complex contrapuntal dances of tremolo picked riffs.

And that’s really what Passeisme offer for the majority ‘Eminence’. A taught, dense, fast-paced rush of musical information without let up. The guitar lines race through each moment, as if desperate to reach their cadence, with drums egging them on at every turn. Vocals bellow away above this cacophony. The choice to adopt a gruff, hardcore style may seem ill fitting on paper, but it serves to simultaneously heighten the intensity whilst keeping things grounded in a human vulnerability. This colouring of melodrama also fits the French decadence of the lyrical concepts well.

The music does eventually calm down with the penultimate track ‘Chant for Splendour’, a classical guitar piece that functions as a build into the finale of the album, the ten minute ‘Chant for Enlightenment’. This peace sees Passeisme flirt with the virtues of musical contrast, with the first half reaching for if anything higher levels of intensity and aggression than the preceding tracks, only to dispense with the frantic, melodic riffing with very little ceremony and breakout into classical guitar again. This in turn gives way to a slow metallic finale, essentially the same general approach as the bulk of the album but with the tempo slowed. From this vantage point we are offered a more detailed view of the architecture behind Passeisme’s riffing style.

All would be ideal were it not for the lack of integration. ‘Chant for Enlightenment’ is essentially three tracks stuck together, which in itself would not be a problem, but having broken the flow of galloping melodic black metal only to reintroduce it in a slower, more dramatic form feels tacked on. It may be a small blemish, but after the exhausting slog of the opening handful of tracks, one could be forgiven for feeling that these slower elements and new timbres would have served to bring additional dimensions to the rest of the album, and grant ‘Eminence’ a little more character in the process. All the same, this is above average in the field, and certainly one to add to the new wave of bands resurrecting melodic, riff-based black metal with a decidedly contemporary sheen despite the overt historicism of the conceptual material.

Originally published at Hate Meditations