The third album of Blackened Death Metal void-lurkers VALDRIN is here, set to be unravelled on June 12th, courtesy of Blood Harvest Records.
Cosmic ambient soundscapes introduce this album in an eerie Sci-Fi manner while gorgeous piano keys are played to add a more haunting note to the atmospherics with whispered speech furthering this creepy vibe. Blastbeats, melodic riffs swathed in dissonance and snarling vocals jump into a powerful display of really interesting and unique material, sort of like a mort twisted and harrowing take on the sound Windir had. A ravenous and destructive blackened and deathly onslaught really unusual melodies continues to offer a fragmented, warped and psychotic blend of extremity.
This material is not only weird but also enticing with a killer display of memorable ideas that possess a chasm-opening quality of pure unrelenting tension. Sanguineous and determined to lay waste with obliterating musical convulsions, this truly is a ferocious and unhinged style of Blackened Death Metal unlike anything I have heard, or at least nothing that closely resembles this grandiose epic of furiously eccentric oddities. The keyboard sections work excellently at accentuating the tense ambience of the record without ever feeling too cheesy or overindulgent.
This nightmarish tome of musical brilliance certainly is captivating with a growing sense of frenzy and panic to the relentless aggression of symphonies, sick and unsettling in nature. Piercing spearheads of lead guitars jump through the blend in a manner akin to Icelandic Black Metal, a comparison that does not fit any of the other many elements of this sound. This is clearly one of those releases that cannot be compared to another, something I always hold in high regard, thus the best I can do is summarise the demented offerings as truly astonishing craftsmanship of disdainful, panicked, unsettling and reverberate Black-Death Metal of wonderful and unwieldy proportions.
Truly an interesting work of artistic, musical and atmospheric prowess that will certainly capture the respect of underground Black Metal and Death Metal fans alike, at least those with a mind open to experimentation and estranged variations of their beloved genre being spewed forth from a cataclysmic void of celestial horrors. -8.5/10
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