a review of some other dumb band

Wild Beyond bargains with a lying, writhing serpent of thrashy black metal. The band pursues chaos and finds itself in a lovely mess on its self-titled debut.

The opener, “In the Footsteps of Mars,” is exemplary: the guitar crashes ahead and the cymbal stands teeter as the bass shakes the burning ground under your feet. Everything in a frenzy, everything in constant motion.

The Goddamn thing is reckless.

“Detonation of Secret Works” shows the same disregard for safety. I found its manic, climbing riffs inventive and colorful. The vocal crawls between growls, snarls, and wretches, leaning more toward black metal than death.

Songs do relent, but only between all the dungeon-defiling cutting and squealing.

And the band will explore. “Frenzied at the Skull” almost recalls classic British metal. On "Antichrist Coronation," the maniacal drumming momentarily loses touch with the guitars, losing each other in the dark they create.

The album remains dynamic through its eight songs. Some moments lack inspiration, and some songs perhaps go too long. But what beeswax can long withstand the heat of the sun?

This Philadelphia trio took shape amid peak 2020 covid. "Wild Beyond" was released April 14, 2023, on Gates of Hell Records.

 

another generous review—this time for some atmospheric black metal band from Siberia

Melodies—buoyant and boreal, layered and lofty—ring out on this diverse black metal album

ULTAR’s latest album, At the Gates of Dusk, often stays near the moonlit path worn by the second-wave black metal pioneers. Songs like “Midnight Walk and Reminiscences of Necromancy” and “My Rope” feature the genre conventions—blast beats and rasping gauged-eye screams. Rhythms on these songs trend toward the furious and unyielding while the drums, not the guitars, dazzle.

But ULTAR plays atmospheric black metal that leans at times toward post-metal and even shoegaze. This album, which features higher production value than the pioneer and modern purist recordings, features more accessible melodies even while retaining a lot of the older back metal stylings. The melodies—buoyant and boreal, layered and lofty—ring out in their simplicity within the harrowed arrangement’s peduncular hallucinosis.

Some of the most obvious post-metal/shoegaze sounds arrive with the slower-paced “Antiques”—a trotting Elk of a song, its antlered head dipping as it climbs the rise of red hills. The guitars are fuzzed and jangle more than they vomit distortion. Likewise, “Rats in the Walls” opens with a delicate construction of guitar harmonics, reverb, and fuzz. Then comes the distortion and the screaming, the splashing cymbals, and then the onslaught alongside a simple melody. This is perhaps the album’s most dramatic song; although the promotional materials claim the album is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, during this song I think of Mary Shelley and picture the monster Frankenstein crashing through the Arctic in a stolen dog sled, his creator, Victor, closing in as the ice begins to crack.

ULTAR is a five-piece band from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. At the Gates of Dusk, released November 20, 2022, follows the albums PANTHEON MMXIX (2019) and Kadath (2016). The band has opened for Behemoth, Cradle of Filth, Myrkur, Suffocation, Vltimas, Hate, Wiegedood, Alcest, Swallow the Sun, Harakiri for the Sky, and The Ocean.