 |
| Original painting by Larissa Belcic. |
Kosmogyr is a two-man black metal outfit with one member in Prague and one in Shanghai. Luckily for all of us, bands like Gorguts and Kosmogyr are making it clear that long-distance collaborations are now a viable source of quality music.
I usually try to avoid the "band x sounds like band y" comparisons because it's idiosyncratic to the reviewer and potentially alienating to the reader. There have been lots of albums that, after reading a press release, I was convinced I'd hate, only to find out later that it was something I very much enjoyed. All this is a long-winded way of saying I'm going to break my own rule: After the brief introductory song, Kosmogyr's first full length burns into "The Wane," a song that reminds me, very pleasantly, of Quietly, Undramatically-era Woe. Contrary to the title of the song, it's a full-bore barn-burner of a muscular-yet-melodic black metal that puts me in the mind of the non-Cascadian USBM scene.
The title track takes a slower pace, but with tremolos and guitar harmonies aplenty. The raspy vocals and intricate guitar work tickle my black metal bone perfectly. All of the songs here present a very coherent style for a first-time outing, but with enough variation in the songwriting to keep it interesting. Album-closer "Thalassic Lunacy" goes with a more melancholy start, but repeatedly builds into something driving, harsh, and beautiful at the same time. This is the best kind of melodic black metal, not the kind that drones on aimlessly.
There is one nit I have to pick, and that's with the band's use of interludes, be they separate songs, intros, or outros. "Sui Generis" is a perfectly reasonable opening track, even if the keyboards sound a bit like the ancient electric organ my great-grandfather preferred for church music. But we eventually hit "Quiescent," with an intro that's very reminiscent in sound and feel to the intro of Aerosmith's "Dream On." Sometimes they even put these segues back to back--"Eviternity" ends with church bells, but segues immediately into an electronic xylophone-type intro to "Frailty." The lack of consistency is a bit bizarre, and I found that sometimes these interludes took me "out of" the album when I didn't want to leave.
Which isn't to say that there's no room for quiet pieces or interludes in metal. Quite the opposite. In fact, the band gets it completely right with "Vision," a track that starts with a brief, quiet guitar intro that leads logically and melodically into the main meat of the song. But as I said, this is a nit pick. If they held on to a few bits and pieces of interludes that maybe should have been lost in editing, it's worth it for the high-quality black metal that the band is well on its way to mastering. My recommendation is to let some of the stranger interruptions pass by and focus on the what's good here--and 90% of it is very, very good.