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8.0
- Band:
HAIL SPIRIT BLACK - Duration: 00:42:12
- Available from: 28/06/2024
- Label:
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Agonia Records
Three years after the perplexing (albeit good) “Mannequins”, the Greek band returns to the market and returns – from a stylistic point of view – to the fold, demonstrating right from the tracks released in preview that the retrowave experiment of the previous album was actually unique in their path.
Indeed, perhaps as a compensation mechanism, this new work is – overall – the most traditional of the band’s entire discography. Obviously the meaning of the adjective ‘traditional’ must be modulated on the proposal of the guys from Thessaloniki, always standard-bearers of an avantgarde black metal that blends with psychedelia and suggestions from cinema (whether it’s horror, Italian thriller or science fiction, it doesn’t matter).
Well, this “Fossil Gardens” forcefully recovers the symphonic black metal component, broadening its scope, made explicit by the return to screaming (which alternates with the now usual clean vocal lines), by the guitar textures and by the use of blast beats, so much so as to make this work comparable to the recent (and excellent) studio efforts of the rediscovered …And Oceans, as well as Borknagar.
And the choice of a more ‘streamlined’ line-up compared to the two previous albums seems to go exactly in this direction, leaving the keyboards of Sakis Bandis and the voices of Cons Marg on the bench to concentrate on a classic four-piece formation, aimed at a heavier and more direct sound.
“Starfront Promenade” immediately catapults us into the mood of the album, demonstrating an excellent ability to synthesize the different souls of the group, between sci-fi anxiety, black metal and a complex and layered writing style. Hail Spirit Noir never lose sight of the melody and the result is that these almost five initial minutes pass in a flash, leaving room for a spectacular double (not by chance chosen as the opener): “The Temple Of Curved Space “ and “Curse You, Entropia” are two ‘brother’ pieces, close in mood and structure, both built on very well-crafted riffs. If the first reserves authentically progressive flashes, the second is an authentic masterpiece, which will stick in your head after the first listens, despite not having at all the (negative) characteristics of the ‘big single’.
The Greeks seem to look to the 90s, recovering a lot from the melodic, symphonic (but also avant-garde) black metal of Norway at the time, think of Covenant, Dimmu Borgir, Tartaros and sulphurous company, mixing everything with the stylistic elements that distinguish them, and a class that has few equals.
Compared to their very early works, Haris and his companions choose a more organic and in a certain sense cinematic approach: of course, the surprise effect – if we want to call it that – that characterized the group’s discography up to the masterpiece “Mayhem In Blue” is largely gone, but compensated by a very high writing ability, capable of creating complex but always focused pieces, united by a very strong red thread, which does not, however, impede their personal development.
For this reason, the subsequent compositions align with the mood and the alien, cosmic and sidereal space suggestions, which characterize the entire album, with less warm and Mediterranean tones than “Mayhem In Blue”, but still enveloping in its complex charm.
And so, if “The Blue Dot” is another great piece and “The Road To Awe” manages not to make its ten minutes of length weigh on you, thanks to a compelling pace that takes the listener from the acoustic softness of the incipit to the black metal roughness that blends with an excellent classic heavy metal of the conclusion, the most experimental ‘quotient’ is represented by the last two songs, the short and visionary “Ludwig In Orbit” (literally a psychedelic Beethoven, reinterpreted by a space interpreter) and the title-track, in which the quartet further gives vent to their creativity, writing a piece that is not at all immediate, complex (perhaps too much), supported by the keyboards and open, dilated guitar melodies that look to post-black metal and shoegaze.
The overall result is an intense, mature work, which in part captures you at first listen but which needs time to fully express all the possibilities it contains. Needless to say, Hail Spirit Noir are excellent musicians, helped in the mastering phase not only by the ‘usual’ Dimitrios Douvras (Rotting Christ, Ponte Del Diavolo) but also by Magnus Lindberg of Cult Of Luna, whose touch seems to have added different nuances to the compositions, which in any case keep intact the trademark of the Hellenic combo.
An unexpected and very successful change of skin. Welcome back.
