Album Review: Borknagar - Winter Thrice (2016)

Not many bands do majestic and sweeping melodies as well as Borknagar; there's a real sense of grandeur, of mystical heroism and spiritual power, in many of the songs on Winter Thrice. It's a richly textured album with a lot going on. The first four tracks are exceptional; they're unpredictable and beautifully arranged, each song has its own fingerprint and own path to tread. It all falls under the theme of winter: groaning frost and eternal blizzards, the rhymes of mountains and ice draped rocks; it's a harsh yet harmonious landscape and, as in 'Panorama', 'Everything grows, Everything Dies.' Erosive black-metal collides with soaring folk-melodies, the best songs on this album are those that waltz between intense spurts of black-metal and melodious clean passages inlaid with tender keyboards, harmonious vocals and acoustic caressing. Occasionally, as in 'When Chaos Calls', the two worlds combine, one world flows in to the other, and this is when this album is at its best, when these tender melodies merge with abrasive shrieks and pounding drums.

The two pre-released tracks that open the album are incredible songs that lift the album to the summit of frost-topped Norwegian mountains from the get go, it's hard to top such a great opening and the rest of the album attempts to break free from its mountainous shadow. They may have been more powerful placed elsewhere in the album, as a centre piece perhaps, or as a mighty culmination at the end.

The clean vocals in 'Winter Thrice' are fantastic; the rotation of vocalists works perfectly, each singer has a certain tone that reacts with the others and the song so well: Lazare has a soft melodious voice that seems to long for something, Vortex has a powerful idiosyncratic whoop, more fierce, Garm - of Ulver - comes in with a more depressive drawl before Vintersorg's shrieks infiltrate from the external cold. I like clean vocals when done right, and Borknagar are masterful.

Some songs fall a bit flat in comparison, the intensity and the diversity isn't kept up, 'Noculent' is rather bland with its folk hard-rock conventionality, but it leads in to the pummeling snow-blast opening of 'Terminus', There is a strong progressive element to this album. 'Terminus' and 'Panorama' are prime examples of this with modulated keyboard sounds not far from something by Yes. 'Panorama' is different and playful, it reminds me of Ihsahn or Solefald, it does seem Lazare - founding member of Solefald - had a much greater role in this album. ICS Vortex isn't as prominent, which is a shame.

The second half of the album, in comparison to the first, isn't as instantly memorable, there were no sections that hooked me like 'Rhymes of the Mountain' and 'Winter Thrice' did. It's a solid record all together, but it could have been so much more. It's certainly on par with Urd, in my opinion. They're consistently great and because of this so much is expected of them. 

Rating: 7.5/10

Album Review: Abbath - Abbath (2016)

Guitar World are streaming the Abbath album here. I've given it a few listens, taken it apart and basked in its fury! The album is scheduled for released on the 22nd of this month.

Frost, ice, winter, and death: black metal for the ice hearted. Abbath's self-titled album is pretty straightforward: melodic thrashy riffs; a barrage of whirlwind sound; blasting drums. Yet, this conventionality is it's strongest and most powerful attribute; Abbath knows melody and the riff like the back of his frostbitten hand and years of writing has only honed the ice-precise structure of this album. 

The first track, 'To War!', got me really excited, its sound a chaotic rampage of speedy riffs and snappy snarls, its intense barrage of sound like something from an Absu record, everything at breakneck speed. The drumming on this song and this album as a whole is one of its best features: Creature - also known as Kevin Foley of grind/death band Benighted - offers much more diversity and aggression than your conventional blast-beat repetitive format. With grind and much brutal death relying on nuanced and varied drumming, the drums here feels much more textured than your typical black-metal formula.

There is enough variety here to keep a listener interested: tempo changes and an acoustic interlude in the second track 'Winterbane'; heraldic trumpets and guitar solos in 'Ashes of the Damned'; vocals are more tortured, strained, and snarling vocals in 'Count the Dead'; 'Root of the Dead' is more plodding in pace, even groovy with the bass is jumping about like a lead - in fact the bass is really interesting throughout - King knows his stuff. This is an Abbath album but Abbath doesn't steal the spotlight one bit.

What made Immortal and I so popular were the riffs. And here there are riffs aplenty; they're persistently engrossing and consistently varied. What I like most is the intensity of the tracks here; there is a real thrash/speed energy that underpins the whole thing, and it doesn't lack heaviness thanks to the drumming. I think working with a new - or partly new - band members and maybe not feeling the weight of expectation that a new Immortal record would have had - has give Abbath an icy blast of creative rejuvenation, and although this is not at all groundbreaking or left-of-field, it's fun and thrashy, intense and lively, and there are some evil solos to!  It owes a lot to that playful-buzz and excitement that the best thrash albums give, and it maintains that trademark, cartoonish corpse-paint and ice aesthetic. 

Rating: 8.5/10