Ageless Powers Arise

Coming off of a drone/black album and a collaboration with a power electronics act, Ride for Revenge released their most normal(?) album with Ageless Powers Arise. Up until now, the band had a reputation for a supremely ritualistic and ugly form of black metal that incorporated doom, electronic music, and noise. That continues on Ageless Powers Arise, but with a lot less of the overt challenging aesthetics in the rest of the Finnish trio's discography, giving them their most accessible (again, ?) album at the time of this writing.

Ageless Powers Arise is the band's highest-fidelity production, bar none. The first two albums were lo-fi bass and static (great bass and static, I might add). Under the Eye incorporated straightforward black metal with reverb on the vocals and guitars, while also introducing contemporary "extreme metal" aesthetics. Enter the Gauntlet approached Sunn O))) levels of drone, albeit with a much quieter mix. In comparison to all these, Ageless Powers Arise is produced like a rock album. The bass guitar takes backseat to the downtuned guitars, and the drums are paunchy with emphasis on the toms and kick. (It feels like I'm describing a wine here.) The synthesizers are less discordant than on Wisdom of the Few and even have a bit of a 1980s sci-fi feel, as on the beginning of "Vomit Ugly Shit".

It's a weird effect that proscribes a different kind of mysticism than the previous albums. Whereas those featured more spoken word, half-screeched shouts, and repetitive mantras, Ageless Powers Arise has groove. The opening instrumental and "Your Blood for His Glory" have simple rollicking guitar leads with mid-tempo percussion as Harald Mentor spittle-shouts demonic/pagan sacrificial lyrics. "Forest of Magic" and "Pale is the Moon of Doom" are so rolling, they might as well be black-and-roll tracks with J. Pervertor's tabs hitting the downbeat more often than not. This album even had guitar solos - a completely new thing for the band! - and they prime the listener well for the noise workouts in the second halves of "Your World Against Mine" and "Your Blood for His Glory".

When I was first getting into Ride for Revenge, I thought Ageless Powers Arise was a weird album for its un-weirdness. That's why I hated it upon first listen. But after some time, it's grown on me; the cultish Ride for Revenge of the previous LPs is here from the outwardly neo-volkisch lyrics to the pagan-tribal drums and the spoken word and slow cacophony that is the last two tracks. At this work's release, every Ride for Revenge release was different, and my inability to accept that difference was based in a shallow appreciation of "weird" and "not weird".

Along with Feed the Infamy, this is probably the best introduction to Ride for Revenge for people who enjoy black metal but aren't into or aren't familiar with the genre's more experimental tendencies. If you like this, try out Under the Eye and The King of Snakes next.

Originally posted to RateYourMusic. Edited for Metal Archives.