8/10 Back in the cold, dark days of quarantining, a Slovakian outfit known as Malokarpatan came across my radar in my endless desire to find music to distract me. In a time where extreme metal was becoming more and more favorable to yours truly, odd hybrids such as this band piqued my interest. One might give them that odd "blackened heavy metal" title that simply means traditional metal with a blackened overlay, but my experience see's it as more of the reverse. With a few albums under their belt, the third one titled Krupinske Ohne is the one that still leaves an impression on me.
More than just a niche style, Malokarpatan's identity lies heavily in the Slovakian historical lore. Not that I could understand a word of it, but the cultural significance seeps into every riff and every passage in a way that makes Krupinske Ohne work better as one massive experience, especially since its nearly fifty minute runtime is packed into only five tracks. All over the place lies softer acoustic licks, haunting synths, fun keyboard tangents, and a tampering with instrumentation meant to invoke a medieval or even ancient feel. It may not be super uncommon for this to work for a transition from time to time, but more than that, this is crafted into the very fabric of the music to achieve such unique flavors.
Behind all of this still lies an insane amount of heavy riffwork that errs on the darker side of the genre, working in blastbeats for the more intense atmospheric build, all the while sneaking in plenty of melody. For how smoothly all of this moves about, it becomes understandable why so much time was needed to really land its impression. It also wouldn't be wrong to point out a heavy doom metal influence, one that avoids anything drone-like or over-the-top, favoring the slow traditional riffs delivered in a dense fashion. More often than not, this precedes the explosive, blackened tropes to round itself out with a progressive feel that retains the folky flavors nicely enough.
With all of this, I may even appreciate the sections that simply cool off all of the layers and simmer into an almost jam-friendly heavy metal lick, such as the majority of "Ze semena viselcuov čarovný koren povstáva" with it's Iron Maiden-esque gallops. The howl/growl snarl that the vocalist employs fits just as nicely for these sections as it does to the more monstrous sections, likely being all part of why this meshes together so nicely. I'd be lying if I said at times things didn't get the littlest bit overwhelming, but this is why I love these straightforward breaks. A very specific mood is definitely needed for black metal of such titanic proportions, but not for the reasons most would attribute to black metal.
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