As The Flame Withers (studio album) by Yoth Iria

From Mercury 04/03/2021 02:03

(No expert on Black Metal or Melodic Black Metal, but I think this is a really cool album. That's it, that's all I'll say parenthetically).

This has everything I was hoping from a Black Metal album: a certain menace, a swirling darkness, excellent staccato riffs, gnarled vocals that sound torturous, some really epic medieval sounding choir parts that lead into towering metal riffing, and a nice variety and integration of all those elements into one cool, cohesive Black Metal journey.

Listening to this conjured images of warfare and Satan, yes, but also somewhat quiet and anguished contemplation and dread. It was a great experience start to finish, but especially loved "The Mantis" - such a great build and pay off. The track "Yoth Iria" is 1. Badass and spooky and 2. also gets bonus points for the classic track and artist matching thing (too bad this isn't the rare hat trick of nameX3). Perhaps the most badass and "catchy" and most-likely-to-make-your-head-go-bangbang track here is I think the fabulous onslaught of "The Red Crown Turns Black". And it doesn't get a whole lot better or more solid ending an album than the one-two punch of "Tyrants", machine sounds, straight into "The Luciferian" - what a cool percussive pulse that closer has. And with the bell-like sounds or whatever keys those are that dominate the last track and was also on earlier tracks, this reminded me of the glorious first track of Burzum's "Filosofem". (Could it be more obvious I'm not very familiar with the genre when the only reference-point I have is the most famous artist or at least most acclaimed artist in the genre? It's like if I reviewed an instrumental hip hop album and could only consistently relate it to Endtroducing... . lol)

Can I also say that that album cover is fucking badass. Okay, that said, I can move on.

It's weird to me that just a couple years ago I felt Black Metal was the least accessible broad subgenre of metal. Not Death metal, didn't really know much about Grindcore, certainly not thrash, not doom, or other such genres, but Black Metal. That was the one that if I saw the genre tag there on an album on RYM with Black Metal I would sigh and skip ahead to something else (quite tough considering the massive amount of love BM gets on that inferior site to BEA ;) ). Yet now as I listen to this album on repeat, I think that is absurd. This is right up my alley. Maybe not my fave genre, but certainly there are qualities and feelings and atmosphere's I get with BM that I don't get anywhere else. Granted, I know that this may be a more accessible form of Black Metal than say old school or mid 90s straight up black metal (the extra word "Melodic" gives that away), and maybe if I went and tried to listen newly to say some old classic albums by Mayhem or Darkthrone I would still be mildly repulsed. But I SERIOUSLY doubt it.

Not to go on too hard a tangent (as I go ahead and do just that) but I think for some reason a year and a half ago or so I remembered how much I loved Pig Destroyer, and decided to explore LOTS Grindcore. Grind is abrasive and inaccessible enough that I think it successfully stripped away all the barriers I had put up to enjoying and even loving other forms of extreme metal - most notably Black Metal, but also recently have adored many Death Metal and classic Heavy Metal and who knows maybe soon Power Metal won't sound absurdly corny. Anyway, Still, as I listen to this Yoth Iria album I get the feeling this is not only a great gateway album for me but could be for many many people who may love thrash and old Judas Priest and the like and want to get into BM. It's that sound and complete as an album.

Okay, digressions out of the way, I'll close by saying this is really really, good stuff and I think it may have opened my eyes a bit to so many classic and great black metal and black metal subgenres.