BARREN CANYON – A Virulent Stream

vote
6.5

• Bands:
  BARREN CANYON
• Duration: 00:35:02
• Available from: 05/22/2026
• Label:

• Avantgarde Music

We were eight years ago for the last chapter of this 'space' adventure called Barren Canyon, to the point that we honestly hardly expected the Canadian duo to return.
“A Virulent Steam”, on the other hand, brings them back to us in good health, even if a premise is necessary: ​​in the period in which its predecessor was released, these atmospheric black metal sounds, veering towards sidereal and dilated shores, were experiencing a phase of absolute interest and golden, from which, however, it seems to us that there was generally little development and evolution – and this album confirms precisely the good intentions, a certainly pleasant rendition, but unfortunately also a hint of staticity and repetition.

The start is ultra-electronic, with a pressing and prominent keyboard for the entire duration of the song. There are the usual carpets of sound of great atmosphere and airiness, which become deliberately oppressive in their obsessive pace, and naturally thanks to the insertion of the voice: in fact we find ourselves torn apart by a biting singing and not without a certain depressive approach, thanks also to the effects that place it in the background, almost as if it were an echo.
The following “Miasmic Lull” is more evocative and dilated, while the third episode offers a more square cut, driven largely by an atonal blast-beat (which to the ear sounds almost as programmed, but changes little for the performance) and by an oppressive cadence, even in the brief break of only keyboards, distorted and eerie.
The keyboards return central and pompous on “Effluvial Pools”: as already written in the past, the 'atmospheric' school of the Avantgarde can be heard – think of the almost natural parallel with Mesarthim – and is always expressed at high levels in its references, certainly updated in an extreme metal key, to a certain space and krautrock. Here too there is room for a slowed-down insert played with a much more marked use of electronics.
The final “The Plague Cloud” finds a good balance between aggression and atmosphere, here almost bucolic in the crescendo of those 'ambient' sounds that already appeared in the previous songs.

In short, a record that succeeds in its aim of transporting us into deep, dark space and which, if it doesn't manage to shine like one of the stars it passes close to, is only due to the inflation suffered by the genre.