FELgrave – Otheterlike Darknesseses

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7.0

• Band:
  Felgrave
• Duration: 00:48:36
• Available from: 25/04/2025
• Label:

• Transcending Obscure

Streaming not yet available

We had come across Feltgrave at the time of the debut “A Waning Light” (2021), an absolute first work that with abundant enough had introduced us to the multifaceted world of the Australian multi -instrumentalist ML JPU, who has long since moved to the Norwegian town of Viken.
We know very well how much these two nations, Norway for residence and Australia for the origin, are very particular and characteristic in providing their musicians with a more or less equal dose of experimental abilities, compositional absurdities and global recklessness; So when a young man who grew up in the Australian black metal scene, often decidedly oriented towards the progressive and cosmic side of the genre, he finds himself composing his favorite music in the original homeland of the most sinister extreme sound in the world, only a complex and articulated proposal can arise, rather difficult to assimilate, but which, once successful, will not be difficult to appreciate even deeply.
With the present and second work, “Otheterlike Darknesses”, the Feltgrave, obviously guided by JPU with the only help of Robin Stone on drums, model their style even more towards a sort of Technical Progressive Death Doom Metal that leaves little escape to the listener, softening it with circular and constantly upset structures, incorporating multiple influences within their essence, In complete freedom, Emeperor, Cynic, Mastodon, Sadist, Sulphur Aeon, Gojira, Gigan, Settticflesh can be called back, as well as the strange hybrid that would be out of superimposing the solo works of Devin Townsnd to the now ancient ones of the deceased Strapping Young Lad. In short, an extreme metal certainly technical and progressive which is both very clear in its intent as a little confusing in an attempt to reach them. Not bad, however, as from the chaos it is always extrapolated with the material useful for this purpose and often only to be better model and make more accessible.
Jupe proves to be very capable of the bass, whose lines are really above the average of the black metal with prog influences, so much so that they often start alone towards the bribe and driving the song perpetually or, to tell the truth, that particular piece of song. Yes, because the felgrave still reduced the number of traces present in the tracklist, passing from five to three and thus lengthening the individual minutages, considering that the duration of “A Waning Light” and that of “OtHerLerike Darknesses” are almost equivalent. This involves a greater expenditure of energy for the listener during the use of work, which requires absolutely dedicated attention to be well understood and dismissed.
JPU's guitarism is very eclectic and follows routes probably known only to him, grafting riffs on riffs that can be black, techno-death, sludge, stoner, doom, death-doom or loaded with a favorable psychedelia that is further exalted by the use of dissonant keyboards and a clean and ethereal vocal stamp that hovers often and thick. The details are well cared for, certainly more than the production, which, however, the latter, comes out much better than that of “A Waning Light”, the main defect of the previous work and instead corrected and improved here.
Defining two long-long minutes long songs as “Winds Batter My Keep” and the title-track seems excessive, as we are certainly not in front of a “Black Rose Immortal” (of the Opeth), just to make a comparison with a progressive song Death Metal long twenty minutes; But the more you will have the courage to perpetrate the listening, the more magically we will reveal to the ears, pleasant and enveloping situations and solutions, that they are a vocal line, a change of time sudden, a deafening dissonance à la Gigan or a very peaceful relaxation arpeggio that almost certainly preludes to a subsequent restart with a thousand to the palustrum lids of unpredictable metal. The shortest – only twelve minutes! – “Pale Flowers under An Empty Sky” is paradoxically the most dichotomous among the three tracks, where the alternation between quiet minutes and violent shocks is more incisive and redundant.
Therefore, for the felgrave the return to the scenes with “Otheterlike Darknesses” is revealed positively and in growing, while not taking on the connotations of revelation of the scene and still leaving many, many margins of improvement, more in terms of the atmosphere and the transmitted emotions than under that of the mere stylistic expression. The project becomes interesting, we await it to the passage of the third album now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7jk6tdridk