Black metal. The sound quality on this album is pretty hit-or-miss; because Wrest seems to insist on using one guitar track on most songs, there's often a lack of a real rhythm section to certain songs. "Lycanthropus Rex" features some frantic playing of higher tremolo notes whilst the drums bang out a blasty tempo, but the frantic lead doesn't do anything but sort of screech at the front of the mix. It's weird moments like this that hold back "Howl" in terms of sound quality, not really its songwriting in general; generally speaking, Leviathan is very solid songwriting-wise. Being a black metal artist, though, I guess Wrest felt obligated to screw up the sound of his early work on purpose somehow.rA lot of the stuff on "Howl" is great, nihilistically claustrophobic one-man black metal, but there's enough "meh" mixed throughout to really hold the release back. Still, though, there's a lot of greatness here.
Bump |
