20 Buck Spin - 2022
9/10
Like I say every year, there’s always an oversaturation of black metal albums hitting the market, but at least one that absolutely blows me away. This year’s platter was delivered by Predatory Light and their doom-laced brand that flattens whatever crosses its path. Death And The Twilight Hours is the U.S. based outfit’s second full-length. Having been around for nearly a decade, this is where a serious impression was made.
Much like many a death/doom masterpiece, this is only composed of a small handful of tracks, with two of them passing the ten-minute mark and swapping the “death” with “black.” It should come as no surprise that these songs work in phases, yet they manage to circle back around the slower pockets that act as the eye of the storm. The opening, thirteen minute epic “The Three Living And The Three Dead” keeps the exact same momentum for the whole run, making itself clear that it’s all one tune while breaking things up. Harsh tremolo chord progressions remain in line for the whole length, but never does it feel boring or repetitive. To top it off, the last two minutes or so doom out hard by slowing things down and rearranging the notes to feel like a proper outro that gives zero fucks about what’s in the way.
What really helps Death And The Twilight Hours is that there’s still a mild hint of melody in all of the guitars. Leads that I’d go as far as calling catchy manage to stay prevalent for the whole run. The fact that a genre usually delivered on such a piercing front can stay this smooth is beyond impressive. The blast beat drums work in and out of steadier riffs that pair together beautifully. On the flip-side, numbers that ride the doom waved like the title track feel extremely organic. The higher, dissonant guitars work with the black metal aesthetic, and the crawling collapse into an anthemic feeling war march vibe boost the entire song’s uniqueness. And don’t even get me started on the fret-happy solo at the end, because it gives a lot of classic metal solos a run for their money.
Predatory Light is a great example of taking styles that have been matched together before and really spinning them to be something interesting. Almost never does an entity feel so dark and unsettling through an extreme scope while also holding catchy passages and melodic appeal. So much is squeezed out of so little, and you can never go wrong with that. I’d recommend this to anybody who has a hankering for extreme metal and heavy music that sticks to the melodic side.
Listen -> Bandcamp
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