Review Summary: Peachy keen.
Praise section:
Black metal is in this nifty cool album. First off, you’ll find that cool blast beats exist in the nifty music, and that is essential to mention. You’ll also find nifty acoustic bits and a cool progressive sound betwixt the shreds ala Opeth, how neat, and the shreds are nifty too. It’s neat how the band balances their nifty heavy riffs with cool acoustic sections, and both nifty sections are super duper and sound cool. The man’s screams are also quite nasty and nifty as per cool black metal essentialities. The album is well-written, it’s pretty clear, that’s cool. How nifty!
Negativity zone:
Here’s one major complaint I have: what’s the hecking point? It’s cool for sure, but other cooler albums have been made a billion times before. With this kind of album you could change the name of the genre to Derivative Metal to detail it and I doubt anyone would notice. The album sounds much too calculated — add the acoustic segment here, add a riff here, now return to blast beats. It almost sounds tired. I’m not hearing personality whether in the drums, riffs, or vocals.
Final, nifty thoughts:
The album is nifty enough through its run time to engage and surprise. Suddenly a cool riff will emerge that will make you say oooo. OR a shred will slap and immediately force you to strap on your seat belt. OR perhaps another acoustic lick will come in hot and bring the flavour. The result, ultimately, is a smorgasbord of happy slappy, icy cold black metal served fresh and in a well produced basket. Cool, how nifty.