Style: black metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: faith, faithlessness, nihilism
Thoughts: When I first saw the cover for Rzeki Gorycsy I thought it could be dungeon synth. I've seen many albums from Gondolin Records that carry this same art style and color scheme. It was enough to get me to check it out and I can definitively say that this is not dungeon synth, though there are some small moments of it here and there.
What Piolun does bring to the table though is some truly excellent black metal. This is the kind of debut where you know the people behind it have been around for a while and know exactly what they want to write - which turns out to be exactly the case with the guitarist/vocalist of Piolun. He just so happens to be the same vocalist of Blaze of Perdition - another one of the finest black metal bands in recent times.
The quality shown from Blaze of Perdition is found here, even though the song writing is quite different. The seven songs contained on Rzeki Gorycsy are menacing. They have a hatred... no a vitriol against all things sacred in this world.
This rawness of emotion comes through in both the vocals and the guitar riffs. The vocals are steeped in this deep loathing and disgust for anything that would involve hope. The guitars are a bit more nuanced; they often build an exceptionally ominous atmosphere, alternating between singular note tremolo picking and full chords - but that is only the start.
There is so many oddities buried in this album. There's some dungeon synth towards the end of the album with Imiq Gwiazdy. There's a bizarre traditionally (I think) sung moment at the end of Blady swit. Acoustic guitars litter multiple songs, and the band is not afraid to use silence either. This is hardly a standard black metal album.
It's hard for me to find new black metal that sounds really good to me. I feel like I've heard most of what the genre has to offer at this point and there aren't many bands out there that do anything for me anymore. Piolun is an exception to that rule. Rzeki Gorycsy not only subverted my expectations, is has continually exceeded them. It goes to show that there is still good black metal to be found out there, you just gotta dig.
No comments:
Post a Comment