Review Summary: A gorgeous waterfall of despair.
Let's talk about mood for a moment.
Music is all about emotions. For the most part, the goal of every piece of music is to convey a certain kind of feeling. Whether it's a relaxing little acoustic number or a bombastic symphony, a mournful blues song or a fist-pumping metal anthem, every element of that song has a mission statement to produce an emotional response from the listener. When it clicks, when the song sets its mood perfectly, time stops meaning anything. The song might have been two minutes long, it might have been thirty. You can just melt into it and experience it for as long as the creator will let you. All the brilliant musicianship in the world can't mask an album that fails to set the scene, but an album that nails its mood can make up for a lot of other flaws.
I think you can see where I'm going with this.
NONE are (is? It could be a one-man band) cut from the same cloth as Coldworld and Woods of Desolation, taking Xasthur's model of depressive black metal and making it a touch less harrowing, but almost romantic in its presentation of despair. All the familiar elements are here, mournful pianos and reverberated howling vocals, long track runtimes, dirge-like tempos, wall of sound production. You name something that should be in DSBM and NONE's got it in spades. These three tracks don't deviate even remotely from the formula, but they're just so god damned good at it.
There's a lot of talk in metal circles about riffs. If you're big on riffs... you might be disappointed, but that's kind of how DSBM works. You pick one melody and run it through the wringer, adding elements, taking them away, shuffling pieces around for 15 minutes and call it a track. NONE works this to full effect, to an almost comical degree. The opening three notes of the first track are literally the three notes the entire twelve minute behemoth is built around. Sometimes it's a piano doing it, sometimes a guitar, the drums will switch from slow stomps to a paradoxically gentle double kick roll, but the song remains locked onto those three tones from beginning to end.
This is where mood comes in, and the importance of "what ya do with what ya got." Despite an entire song being constructed around what can't even be called a riff, and an opening track that's about as long as an entire Nails album, NONE never feels repetitive. Rather, the feeling that plaintive little sequence evokes is explored to its fullest. Each track seems like it breathes, ebbing and flowing around that core melody, creating a colossal atmosphere.
Production is a big part of this. Black metal might be the riskiest metal subgenre when it comes to production, sometimes it's far too shiny and pristine and ruins that mood I keep banging on about, sometimes it's so far down the trve kvlt rabbit hole it sounds like a demo tape someone's making you listen to on a laptop. Well, NONE knocks it out of the park. Guitars have a fuzz to them that sounds substantial but not grating. The drums are powerful but not artificial. Even the bass has an important role to play. Everything is just lush and full sounding, a big waterfall of despair.
I should also say the vocals manage that rare feat of sounding agonized without being self-parody. These aren't Silencer shrieks or Inquisition gurgles. Just a real nice howl caked in reverb that complements the compositions.
The primary knock on this album is an easy one. NONE really is by-the-numbers DSBM. There is nothing happening here that other albums don't do. NONE adds nothing to the formula, pushes no boundaries, and does very little to separate itself from the pack. There isn't a single moment during the relatively short runtime where you'll be surprised by something. If you've been around this type of music a lot, you'll likely even be able to anticipate the various shifts and turns the tracks will take before you hear them for the first time (crescendos into climaxes are particularly predictable).
But again, it's about that mood. NONE's self-titled is a classic case of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. When you start to dissect the album, the individual elements make it seem like a weak entry into the DSBM scene, but all combined it's one hell of a potent experience. There are a thousand albums like it, but few that are executed this well, and sometimes that's all you need in an album.
