Lmst

By Thus Spoke

When a promo doesn’t adequately prepare you for what an album will sound like, one of two things is usually the case. Either the promo is poorly written, or the music is particularly description-defying. The promo for Felgrave’s sophomore, Otherlike Darknesses, while well-written, was insufficient to convey the music’s especially idiosyncratic nature. Despite the forewarnings that it “[melds] doom, black, and death metal in a way rarely done before,”1 and contains “intense and complex parts that wouldn’t be out of place on a technical death metal album,” Otherlike Darknesses is far stranger and deeper than expected.

In a fashion mimicking the genre of Felgrave’s early work—doom—Otherlike Darknesses consists of just three songs, each titanic in scope. But rather than steadily constructing towers of hefty riffs and crescendoing melodies, these songs erratically climb up and down the steep walls of already ruined castles, throwing the listener off the edge of a parapet to crash to earth or float down with chilling grace. Without abandoning compositional coherence, themes are not so much reprises as tethers that bind chaos into monstrous complex wholes. The twisted dissonance of guitars—accelerating and contorting discomfortingly, chirruping like alarms (“Winds Batter My Keep”), and walking in jerky rhythms—over a backdrop of variously whooshing and moaning synths (“Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky”) is both confrontational and horribly transfixing. It’s a sound so vibrantly reminiscent of Thantifaxath, that I felt the need to confirm multiple times that no affiliation exists between them and Felgrave. But this similarity is only one side of Otherlike Darknesses. In a way that seems to amplify distress, Felgrave incorporate ample use of cleans and disquieting calm. While the latter heightens tension insidiously, the former do so overtly, as belted-out, half-sung wails, often multi-tracked until they are noisier than the instrumentation, or eerily intoned as a softly repeated refrain (“Pale Flowers…”). And yet, amidst the horror, there is also strange elegance and heart.

Otherlike Darknesses is an intense listening experience. The moaning, discordant cries and throaty screams that narrate it respectively ring with haunting strangeness, and drip with malevolence. The endlessly shifting, slowing down, speeding up, lurching cacophony of tremolos and plucks and impossibly fast and flexible drums contains barely a few minutes of (relative) calm in all its near-50, and even these are menacing thanks to the cruel shifts between harmony and dissonance (“Pale Flowers…,” “Otherlike Darknesses”), and the spiderlike wanderings of fretless bass prominent against stripped-back ambience (“Winds Batter…”). It is nauseating and jaw-droppingly brilliant. Felgrave aren’t throwing things haphazardly at the wall to show off or shock; the pieces that appear scattered fit together into grand, compelling compositions, no matter how unconventional. It’s impressive and terrifying, given the wild places they go, just how easily and how organically Felgrave maintain such coherence. How a diabolical chaos can hide the subtle theme that hums in a later synth and manifests again as gut-clenching a series of chords (“Winds Batter…” “Otherlike Darknesses”); how a stillness can turn so quickly into a storm and singing fall into place so naturally beside them both (“Pale Flowers…). When at last, a mournful melody blossoms (“Otherlike Darknesses”) its brevity and natural fulfilment of its origins make it precious and magnificent. The acrobatic, terrifying things M.L Jupe is doing with guitars, and the profound distinction and interplay between the synths, creeping bass, and manic treble is frightening and wonderful, and never feel self-indulgent. The drumming—courtesy of Robin Stone (Evilyn, Norse)— is as insanely good as it is insane; often inhumanly fast, presciently dynamic, and in constant evolution.

In spite of my awe, it would be remiss not to admit that Otherlike Darknesses is still a bit much.2 Due to its structure, one must endure its itinerant movements without even the brief respite that comes from such music being split into more, shorter songs, and this can prove a little exhausting, considering their calibre. Felgrave’s clever weaving of disparate elements create just enough order to maintain integrity, and slips into snatches of quiet and melody just in time, and so manages to keep the derangement from becoming overwhelming. The congruence that this album possesses is, admittedly, of the sort grasped better through patience and repeated listens, but unlike many such unusual extreme metal works, its assets are so immediately transparent they make for powerful motivators to take up this mantle.

Otherlike Darknesses proved to be the best kind of surprise. Though following its trajectory can be daunting, Felgrave has created an experience that is consuming and thrilling enough to make that journey far easier than one might expect. Twisted and scary, but human and graceful, and nonchalantly epic, it’s not something I’ll soon forget.

Rating: Very Good
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: April 25th, 2025

#2025 #35 #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #DissonantBlackMetal #DissonantDeathMetal #Evilyn #ExperimentalMetal #Felgrave #Mar25 #Norse #NorwegianMetal #OtherlikeDarknesses #Review #Reviews #Thantifaxath #TranscendingObscurityRecords

Evilyn – Mondestrunken Review

By Dear Hollow

At first glance, it appears that international death metal act Evilyn only has your demise and destruction in mind. Mondestrunken is uncompromisingly heavy, riffs pushed to their shimmering limits like oil from the collapsing god machine, hellish growls from beyond the stars, and drums funneled through warp speed directly into the collapsing horror of a black hole. It feels like a background of cosmic noise, lifeless, unfriendly, and directionless, but patience yields results: obelisks emerge into the view. Not that they were ever absent, but that our eyes could not behold them. Beneath the fray of entropy, the eyeless stars, and the unending weight of time, patterns emerge. Lifelessness itself resurrects. The dead shall rise again. We were never alone, and that should make us more terrified than ever.

Evilyn was originally founded by Coma Cluster Void’s Jeanne Comateuse, attempting to make cosmic-themed old school death metal with a substantial hit of dissonance. With debut EP Inside Shells, the template was set: devastating death metal with shifting nebulae of tempos and time signatures alongside ruthless discordance. Evilyn’s lineup has shifted,1 its sole remaining member, guitarist/vocalist Anthony Lipari of Thoren, now including bassist Alex Weber of Malignancy and drummer Robin Stone of Norse and Ashen Horde, but the emphasis is as uncompromising as ever. First full-length Mondestrunken (German for “moon-drunk”) is as punishing as it is puzzling, a relentless bombast of death metal insanity fractured and splattered across the face of infinity.

Across thirty-seven minutes, Evilyn creates an OSDM template that is splintered through the fractured light of an alien prism, the result just as chaotic and alienating as you would expect – dissonance is relentless, the tempos and rhythms are constantly shifting, and Lipari’s vocals remain in deep growl mode. Initially overwhelming in terms of utter saturation, repeated listens unearth more and more. Contrary to the dissonance-for-dissonance’s-sake screeching of Mithridatum or Scarcity, or the improvised assaults of Acausal Intrusion or Ar’lyxkq’wr, Evilyn’s palette emerges in the form of motifs. While initially an apparent clusterfuck of discordance and chugs, blastbeats, and aggressing plodding, the motif gradually reveals itself and the song suddenly makes sense – these take several forms. While the off-kilter morphogenetic riffs of “Dread,” “Limits,” “Penance,” and “Slithering” ground their respective sounds like a traditional Morbid Angel blueprint, the pinch harmonics of “Omission” and “Forgotten” are a flaying reminder of pain. “Forgotten” and “Eat the Elite” explore their riffs with careful precision, each rendition more warped and rusted than the last.

The most tantalizing tracks aboard Mondestrunken are the ones with whom only a framework or structure becomes the motif, Evilyn soaring in mood and madness. The album title is most apparent in “Forgotten,” which truly feels like a cosmic drunken dissodeath passage, deepening in intricacy as it continues – its pinch harmonics nearly a misdirect to the approaching doom – while “Interwoven” lives up to its name with a dynamic structure of growing dissonance with each worming riff. “Bloviate” approaches its sound with a “traditional” proto-chorus, a midsection of contemplative open strums that add greater monolithic weight to the obliteration surrounding it. Resounding highlights are centerpieces “Penance” and “Vacuous,” their mercilessly mechanical sound achieving a hypnotic effect. The clockwork guitar plucking in the former collapses to dizzying shredding and animalistic blastbeats that rend planets, while the dissonance achieves a distinctly dying warble. The latter’s constant shifting between 6/8 and 4/4 enacts a cosmic pendulum, swaying between destruction and creation, the clarity of its cohesive conclusion feeling more punishing than the chaos surrounding it. Overall, Mondestrunken’s viciousness is palpable, the breadth organic – continuous and relentless hiss against the breath of life – each instrument organic and audible through the alien shimmering. Evilyn embraces experimentation with just a kernel of a tenet that keeps the mind secured to mortal realms.

Don’t be surprised if you hate Evilyn’s brand of bombastic saturation off the bat. Its dissonance is unending, its vocals one-dimensional, and shifting passages feel like cosmic whiplash again and again. However, it’s a surefire slow burn in spite of its relentless attack, its revelations feeling like the solution of a difficult cosmic puzzle and the kernel of accessibility blooming into monolithic significance. Its audience is limited, but fans of Fractal Generator, Artificial Brain, Aseitas, and Asystole – rejoice! For those willing to ride Evilyn’s warped spiral of the abstract and maddening, Mondestrunken’s secrets are revealed with tantalizing fulfillment.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: evilyndm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/evilyndeath
Releases Worldwide: August 16th, 2024

#2024 #40 #AcausalIntrusion #ArLyxkqWr #ArtificialBrain #Aseitas #AshenHorde #Asystole #Aug24 #AvantGardeDeathMetal #ComaClusterVoid #DeathMetal #DissonantDeathMetal #Evilyn #FractalGenerator #InternationalMetal #Malignancy #Mithridatum #Mondestrunken #MorbidAngel #Norse #OldSchoolDeathMetal #OSDM #Review #Reviews #Scarcity #TechnicalDeathMetal #Thoren #TranscendingObscurityRecords