VAST PYRE – II Bleak

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7.0

• Bands:
  VAST PYRE
• Duration: 00:43:28
• Available from: 11/28/2025
• Label:

• Octopus Rising

Streaming not yet available

Born in 2021 in Eisenach (Germany), Vast Pyre stood out three years later with a self-titled debut album (ennobled by a beautiful painting by the artist Zdzisław Beksiński on the cover) which proposed itself, in many situations, as a catatonic version of High On Fire. With a staff now expanded to a trio (two guitars and a drums), the band returns to the scene with “II Bleak”, published by Argonauta's subsidiary, Octopus Rising.

“Begotten” opens the dance with a deceptive hard rock, given its collapse, in a few minutes, into the uncertain pace of a sludge reduced to dementia: a shuffling of feet that recaptures the rhythm only in the beautiful final psychedelic coda. An apparent glimmer of light, because “Tenebrosity's Path” returns to annihilate with a bloodless doom, a morphine-addicted version of Electric Wizard expanded into ten minutes of riffs and declaimed vocals, while “Beneath the Surface” recalls the psychedelic drifts of Nibiru's “Netrayoni” (not surprisingly Argonauta stablemates). All things considered, the most catalogable song of the lot is “The Untold”: nine minutes of Sabbathian riffs and electric guitars that seek each other, entwine and then let go in disappointment, while the final “Perdition Fatal” embraces the lowered tones of Conan with the devotion to Matt Pike already shown in the debut.

What remains with you, after listening to this album, is the feeling of a band satisfied with being repellent, a group skilled in moving with agility within a pond of dense sounds, to the point of arousing a continuous sensation of suffocation, where even rare moments of beauty risk being lost, such as the very slow solo that adorns the first minutes of “Tenebrosity's Path” or the almost catchy verse set in the middle of “Perdition Fatal”. Of course, it's difficult not to believe that this feeling wasn't the Germans' intentions, but, even if you want to reward their commitment, you find yourself faced with a demanding listen, made even more tiring by a deliberately compressed production, and by the sometimes improvisational structure, almost as if they wanted to recreate the climate of a rehearsal room.

In short, this album is the classic, Fantozzian grilled ratfish: you may like it or not; what is certain is that, at the first bites, it always leaves you a little perplexed. It's up to you to find the fortitude to persevere in the tasting. A final note aside: the cover once again pays homage to the aforementioned Zdzisław Beksiński, proving how much the world of metal is indebted to the imagination of this artist.