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8.0
- Bands:
BLACK CURSE - Duration: 00:45:07
- Available from: 10/25/2024
- Label:
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Sepulchral Voice
Streaming not yet available
If the debut “Endless Wound” (2020) had already raised a certain amount of fuss in the underground, this new work by Black Curse has its roots even deeper, bringing the sound of the American black-death metal band to a new level of complexity and intensity. The apparent exit of guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky – probably too busy with Blood Incantation – did not slow down the group, who welcomed Steve Peacock (Spirit Possession, Ulthar) to carry forward a musical discourse that today is reflected in more complex structures and in a broader vision of songwriting.
The production, once again entrusted to the prodigy Arthur Rizk (Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, Xibalba), this time becomes more smoky and oppressive, in line with the structural evolution of the music: if “Endless Wound” was a thunderous explosion , “Burning in Celestial Poison” creeps in like a poison, capturing the listener in a denser and more enveloping atmosphere. The sound, while maintaining its brutality, actually seems to have been filtered through a veil of fog, giving the songs a deeply sinister aura that goes hand in hand with the change of approach on the stylistic front. This time the band takes its time, allowing the compositions to develop in a more complex way and to incorporate different shades of the black-death umbrella, starting from a particularly complete track like “Finality I Behold”, the final episode of the debut.
Again, the basis of the group's style can be traced back to Necrovore and similar bands, to get to bands closer to the present day such as Teitanblood, Vorum or Pseudogod. At times we could also speak of 'war' metal, but in the quartet's songwriting one can always perceive a control and care for the riff that are not always traceable in formations belonging to that genre. Even more so in such long compositions, it is vital to have a certain ear for dynamics and to give everything as narrative a development as possible to justify such a length. The plots loosen and expand and then suddenly close again, and in the emptiness that is created at certain moments the group almost manages to project a sort of poetics of revolt. We are therefore no longer in the attempts of certain old musical avant-gardes who, with sometimes confused passages, attempted to feed on waste or to exhibit the atrocious without making too many calculations. In this broader construct, however, there is no shortage of moments of surprising accessibility: some riffs, despite being immersed in such an extreme sound context, manage to emerge immediately due to their roundness, making some passages almost catchy, without ever compromising the intensity of the music. It is in these moments that the band's compositional talent manifests itself most clearly: it is not in fact easy to balance extremism and musicality in a genre like this, and Black Curse manage to do it with mastery, dragging us into a place of dark shadows that demand a form of reaction from the listener.
Led by the execrable voice of Eli Wendler (Spectral Voice), Black Curse demonstrate with “Burning in Celestial Poison” that they have therefore reached a notable maturity, in a genre where there is often the risk of falling into gratuitous smokiness. This is demonstrated by the eleven minutes of “Spleen Girt with Serpent” and those of “Trodden Flesh”, the two peaks of an album that grows a lot with listening and which brings Black Curse definitively to the upper levels of this panorama.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM