Review Summary: black metal underdog
Last year Book of Sand released The Face of the Deep, an ambitious yet horrid piece of blackened experimentation. A mess of metal, noise, and otherworldly ambiance, the album was incoherent from start to finish, and easily constituted as not just one of black metal' s weirdest and worst albums of the year, but a low point for music in general. As my first experience with the band it was enough to deter me from giving their earlier material a listen, and I was honestly happily resigned to never hearing another Book of Sand record again.
Needless to say, I went back on my word, listened to the newest Book of Sand release Occult Anarchist Propaganda, and for once am thankful for my apparent inability to see things through; this album is truly great. Dropping most of the avant-garde elements of their previous work in favor of crafting something a bit more streamlined (relatively speaking) Occult Anarchist Propaganda is a noisy and discordant black metal record of extremely high caliber. On one hand, it feels unmistakably contemporary; imagine a fusion of Arizmenda's dissonance and the modern USBM scene's penchant for post-hardcore/math-rock influenced atmosphere. The music is never overly technical -or really technical at all for that matter- but the impenetrable maelstrom of sound is undeniably grounded in the same cacophonous roots of bands like Castavet and Liturgy. It's chaotic good, granting the songs a sense of teeth-grinding tension and excitement.
There are also moments on Occult Anarchist Propaganda that exude the wondrous mysticism black metal's second wave effortlessly mastered. Much like its purpose then, the results are equally as hypnotic here; when the sinister twinkling protrudes through waves of atonal tremolo picking and furious blast beats, it feels like you're listening to a black metal album released in 1994. This effect is also fueled by the production. It's more noise-driven than cold, but it obscures the strained rasps just enough to recreate that familiar thrill of listening through a wall of sound. Though certainly not a classic by any stretch, awakening that sense of nostalgia ultimately makes this album a more satisfying listen.
Though it would seem like much of the music would here would be at odds with each other, Occult Anarchist Propaganda feels cohesive. Using subtle transitions - slight permutation of a riff here, a burst of melody there - it leaves one to wonder if modern and classic black metal have more in common than we are led to believe these days. It also leaves one to wonder how a band that seemed so devoid of talent could create an album that would prompt such a thought. Book of Sand has proven to be the victorious underdog, with Occult Anarchist Propaganda joining the pantheon of great 2016 extreme metal releases.
