Life & Death

Since forming in 2021, Russian post-BM act Que Metal has been busy building up a repertoire of mini-albums or EPs, a few singles and one album "Just Another Planet", the last coming out in mid-2023. Not long after that, Que Metal had another release "Life & Death", which probably might have some MA readers wondering why the album and "Life & Death" couldn't have been combined together, even if as a double set. The three tracks on "Life & Death" however form a tight trilogy, in which the style of music changes from one track to the next, so in its concept and realisation "Life & Death", though a short work at 15 minutes in length, merits being a separate release.

Opener "Life" is not all that different from previous work by Que Metal: it's depressive BM with a harsh raw bristly edge and anguished howling vocals with some underlying dark ambient melodies and rather soft-sounding percussion. I recall complaining about the drumming when I reviewed "Just Another Planet" some months ago. The tremolo guitar riffing is darkly melancholy and dramatic in mood and tone even as the raw guitar noise spray is constant. In its later instrumental moments, the music becomes a bit warmer in mood, even as a lead guitar solo retains an acidic edge, and the track becomes an odd combination of raw BM and blackgaze, raw and cold on the one hand and warm and radiant on the other hand – all at once!

From here on, the music on the EP becomes completely instrumental as middle track "Something in between" bathes in a glow of radiant and ethereal blackgaze for a brief couple of minutes. Final track "Death" is a mix of acid-shower atmospheric black and darkly blues-tinged post-BM verging on post-rock. Clean if cold ambient effects might be present in that intense storm going on behind the sad melodies.

Even though working with genres that in some ways contradict each other in sound and mood, Que Metal Xojid brings out finely crafted songs of deep melancholy and an intense sense of loneliness and alienation. As life passes – perhaps through an act of suicide – into death, the music paradoxically moves from a bleak depressive state into something warmer, a bit more radiant, but still dark and cold. At the same time, the music is repetitive and perhaps the concept behind "Life & Death" doesn't really allow for much development, whether in the structure of the music, its mood and atmosphere, in the individual tracks. Coming from a viewpoint pessimistic about the place of humanity and individual humans in the cosmos, what "Life & Death" has to say, it says well – but no more can be expected of it.