HAEMOTH – Black Dust

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  HAEMOTH
• Duration: 00:46:17
• Available from: 05/22/2026
• Label:

• Agony Records

Fifteen years can seem like an eternity, especially in a context like that of black metal, where entire currents are born and disappear within a few seasons. This is why Haemoth's return with “Black Dust”, a new album recently released by Agonia Records, has something unexpected. Released without any particular noise around, almost as if the French band wanted to tiptoe back onto the scene, the album instead represents a reappearance that is anything but irrelevant, bringing back into the spotlight a group that many had now stopped waiting for.

From the first minutes it is clear that the leader Haemoth does not have too much interest in chasing the codes that dictate much of contemporary black metal: “Black Dust” aims, if anything, to recover a sense of danger and hostility that harks back to at least a couple of decades ago, moving naturally between ferocity and colder and more alienating suggestions. If Spektr, the other project led by the mastermind, have often flirted with experimentation and industrial elements, Haemoth have all in all historically embodied a different face of French extremism: overall more direct and more linked to a traditional conception of black metal. Without distorting itself, “Black Dust” however introduces an alien component into its DNA which ends up, at least at times, significantly altering the general picture, sometimes putting at the center a constant sensation of detachment and estrangement which recalls some Moonfog releases from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when certain Norwegian black metal tried to give the idea of ​​coming from another planet.

The speeds remain high and aggression continues to represent the main driving force of the album, but sudden slowdowns, massive sections and telluric deviations also find space within the songs. A continuous tension arises, as if the ground under the listener's feet was constantly on the verge of giving way. Songs like “When The Dust Finally Settles”, “Dead Frequency” and the title track photograph this dynamic well: in the midst of corrosive scores and toxic atmospheres, an unexpected groove emerges, a physicality that makes these pieces particularly effective. They are moments that arrive like a shove in the middle of the acid fog that envelops the album, reminding us that behind the chaos there is lucid writing that is perfectly aware of its own means. Here and there a vague thrash vein even seems to emerge, deformed and hallucinated by the context, but still capable of adding further bite.

As a whole, the album does not stand out for any truly particular character, but in today's panorama which prefers other registers, it certainly stands out. Its greatest merit lies precisely in its ability to appear out of sync with much of today's production, recovering a differently hostile and genuinely malevolent approach without transforming it into a sterile nostalgic exercise. The writing is solid, the experience accumulated over the years is perceived and the final result is moving, leaving a sensation that many recent records struggle to convey: that of really having something burning beneath the surface. Arriving almost out of nowhere, “Black Dust” ends up leaving a deeper mark than its silent publication would have led one to imagine.