Season Of Mist - 2022
5.5/10
Black Lava are an Australian blackened death metal act that dropped their debut full length late last year and only now hit my radar. Having no releases to their history, they somewhat spawned up with Soul Furnace out of nowhere. The love for medieval and lore takes things away from the typical dark/blasphemous themes, which I think impacted the music itself. This is not your typical angle of this brand.
Musically, things range from a nasty barrage of blasting and aggression under a super clean scope, to slow yet mighty sounding chugs. Not an inch of the surface is left raw, as the production causes the atmosphere to shower the listener with everything at once. The bass has that louder, springy presence, and even under the harsh tremolos, you can catch a glimpse of basically everything. Sounds like the perfect storm, right?
The answer depends on what you look for. For one, this amount of cleanliness causes the tracks to mush together just a little too much for my comfort. Despite the shorter runtime, it became difficult to distinguish one idea from another, and it ended up feeling longer than it was. The drastic shift from the unrelenting speed and force of “Northern Dawn” into the chuggy “Necrocatacomb” was the only jarring area where the opposite was true. While the latter song was underwhelming and generic, the former was extremely compelling, and is exactly the aim that I think would help Black Lava moving forward.
The other main thing that isolated me was the fact that the vocals hardly match the music at all. Sometimes, polar opposites are a charm. Other times, they feel awkward, like in the case of Soul Furnace. I like the idea of doing something different, but the vocals are a very tough sell. They would feel far more in place on a DevilDriver record, where the cleaner production and groovier methods would welcome this with open arms. Black Lava is a band worth keeping an eye on. Their ideas are solid and the momentum is there, but the blend is far off, and relaxing the production would certainly help. Sometimes, this is why a demo stage is helpful.
Listen -> Bandcamp
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