Style: Epic black metal married with dungeon synth
Primary Emotions/Themes: Epic black metal in the style of Summoning
Thoughts: Black metal is my favorite musical genre. It's so diverse and full of interesting ideas. It can be as difficult to listen to as nails going across a chalk board, it can be as majestic as the aurora borealis in the night sky. It can be as depressing and as dismal as someone who has hit rock bottom. It can be as spiteful and as full of hatred as lucifer showed when he was cast out of heaven. It can be all these things and so much more... yet it all is still somehow black metal.
On the epic end of the black metal spectrum we have Emyn Muil. Whereas the first two albums were outright Summoning worship, this one begins to diverge ever so slightly from that formula. The dungeon synth is still here, the slow to mid paced black metal is still here... but along side it there is a larger reliance of ambience and majestic atmospheres.
This is not purely an excessive in epic grimness, there are moments where the album feels truly majestic... like the night sky opening up after an extended period of being over cast. It's not a challenging listen by any means. In fact this may be an album to get someone into bands that utilize harsh vocals, as they are not used in the more overt context as most black metal can be.
Alongside the slight change in tone there is a much larger reliance on female vocals in the album, both sung and chanted. This gives the album a bit more of an ethereal feel than the previous two ever had. In fact the album may very well be at its best when the metal and melodies are stripped away and its only ambience with female vocals as the focal point. These moments offer a beautiful contrast to the more militaristic pace of the majority of the album.
While most of the album is outright Summoning worship, I do enjoy that Emyn is branching out just a tiny bit on this album. It allows the project to have a bit of it's own identity rather than relying on one forged by one of the greats of the genre. Looking forward to what is coming next.
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