Returning – Numinous

vote
7.5

• Band:
  Returning
• Duration: 00:46:00
• Available since: 13/06/2025
• Label:

• Bindrune Recordings

Streaming not yet available

Simplifying a lot, the adjective 'numinous' It indicates the divine in a majestic and mysterious sense, evoking a sacredness capable of inspiring deference. Although archaic sounds, it is a relatively recent term: it was in fact coined in 1917 by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in the essay “Das Heilige” (“The Sacred”) to describe the experience of “Totally more”something very powerful and terrible, above every natural manifestation. An ancestral perception, seraphic but also potentially brutal.
Those who know the Returning will already have intuited because they have infatuated with this beautiful word, so much so that they choose it as the title of their second album: the divine and rituality in fact represent the thematic core of the Washington duo project.
Those who approach their music for the first time will find in “Numinous“ An excellent starting point to explore their atmospheric black metal, richly contaminated by ambient and pagan elements. In fact, the disc resumes the speech already undertaken with the debut album “Severance“but in more mature and aware form, which gives prestige to the notable ability of the band to evoke images and emotions with great effectiveness.
Also compared to the previous album, the construction of the disc is also as a sort of primordial ceremony is more accomplished. A ceremony that this time would be linked to the cyclicality of nature, the cosmos and life, as the title of the last track and some thin precautions that we will try to indicate during the review suggest. For now, let's get ready to undertake this black metal ritual with peyote's vague aftertaste.
It begins on the shore to a stream, in an almost meditative atmosphere. “Sacred Decay“ In fact, it opens with aquatic sounds and with the breath of a light wind that swallows jewels of shells, or perhaps an catchy bone flags. It almost seems to perceive the breeze on the skin and the swaying of the grass all around. A shamanic voice rises on a vibrate of touched dishes, while the guitar, light on the synth carpet, a suspended, uncertain but at the same time reassuring atmosphere.
Only after a few minutes does the song turn towards the black, confirming the capacity of the Returning to maintain stylistic coherence and organicity even in articulated songs.
However, there is a limit already found in “Severance”, or a rather canonical approach to Cascadian Black: not so much for the influence of Agallloch, Wolves in the Throne Room or Fauna, but for the tendency to remain within the stylistic styles in a somewhat predictable way. This does not mean that the album is well written, well arranged and offers really interesting moments, such as the solemn and almost medieval section in the middle of “Sacred Decay“which dissolves in ritual percussion and rarefied keyboards; or as “Shadow Portal/Endless Dance“that after a large passage à La Heilung turns into an acoustic ballad, almost able to trace an ample of sparks in the night sky.
Speaking of night sky: the darkness has fallen between one song. The transition is suggested by the variation in environmental sounds, expertly used as a sort of acoustic scenography.
And certainly nocturnal is “Offerings to the Great Circle“whose furious attack is perhaps the only real moment of breaking in listening otherwise fluid of this album. The ritual reaches its peak through a successful fusion of USBM elements, Norwegian echoes and vein of transformed post-black, culminating in a dramatic vocal line that confirms the theatrical vocation of the duo.
“Numinous” – we said – is a circular album and all the rims sooner or later close: here is that the music slows down until it dissolves in a sigh, which becomes a breath of wind. A light wind, which accompanies the dawn of a new day or towards the rebirth in a new life.
We are again on the shore to the stream. Again there is a fresh breeze. Again the grass that sway everything around. Again about to face the journey in which the Returning have just guided us. Still. And again. And again.