YOTH IRIA – Blazing Inferno

vote
7.0

• Bands:
  YOTH IRIA
• Duration: 00:36:25
• Available from: 08/11/2024
• Label:

• Edged Circle Productions

Three years after their debut, Jim Mutilator's Yoth Iria are back with a new black metal lash of Hellenic origin: “Blazing Inferno” arrives very quickly – not even forty minutes of music – to represent the burning passion of the Greek musician for the most extreme, yes soaked in sulfur but never like this time exuding melody from every pore.
From the initial title track to the last second of music, passing through “Mornings of the One Thousand Golds”, the guitar chords and the most evocative inserts are representations of a constant search for harmonies and melodies, capable once again of recall a certain musicality of the motherland: unlike another recent release of the same genre, “Lakonic” by fellow countrymen Thyrathen, in which this type of sound went hand in hand with a more thoughtful and philosophical (but no less consistent in terms of harshness), here we find the Luciferian and belligerent component reigning supreme.
However, if this makes you think of the work of Varathron, always to remain on the same geographical and musical latitudes, the comparison is perhaps valid in conceptual terms: on a musical level, “Blazing Inferno” appears rather like a different declination of the paradigm professed by “Theogonia ” and especially “Aealo” by Rotting Christ; those two records were able to brand with fire – and in a brilliant way – this synthesis, and this second chapter of Yoth Iria takes its fundamental lemmas, inflecting them through the abrasive voice of He and the intertwining guitars of Nikolas Perlepe and Naberius; the first menacing and bestial, the second committed to weaving kilometers of melodies without ever forgetting to show here and there a certain love for the most classic heavy metal sounds (“Purgatory Revolution”, “Our Father Rode Again His Ride”), with the rhythm section on top (literally) in giving body and depth to the different songs, all obviously devoted to the blackest flame and the epic nature of ancestral battlefields.
The result is a solid album, pleasant to listen to and capable, we believe, of releasing even more energy on the boards of a stage, perhaps even more than the first work (perhaps thanks to the line-up changes?); the problem, from a certain point of view, is precisely the desire to slavishly follow the aforementioned two Rotting Chirst albums, with some passages of “In The Tongue of Birds”, the aforementioned “Purgatory Revolution” and “We Call Upon The Elements ” which really represent a little more than a tribute to the much more famous 'cousins'.
While this will delight those who adored those albums (if you are among them, add half a point to the vote below), on the other hand it leaves us a bit thoughtful: Mutilator was among the founders of Rotting Christ, helping to shape it identity and sound in crucial years (and the same goes for his stay in Varathron), so we would like to hear that voice find its own, true personality instead of 'settling' (so to speak) for writing good pieces, yes violent shameful and fresh at the same time, but too much of what was composed by others.
This certainly hasn't stopped “Blazing Inferno” from staying on our stereo for a while, but we have the hope of an equally energetic work but with a stronger personality in the future.