Frost
Talking to God
6.7
A black metal album that incorporates a wall of sound style of production with the more traditional black metal feel is what this is all about. And I imagine it's successful. But frankly this is not my bag of entrails. You have to be a fan of black metal to give a fuck when a band like this comes along. That's what I am not.
But if I were, I think I would be creaming my trollskin trousers over this. You don't have to be a fan of the style to know you are hearing something relatively creative and different as far as black metal goes. All the folks who treasure "kult" production and songwriting ought to be quite impressed with how this group has maintained the aesthetic while still maintaining a bit of personality all their own. Stomping the idea of rhythm into an unrecognizable mass of broken biomatter, the group trudges from blasting windblown landscapes to midpaced battlehymns without regard to sense or sensibility. They are here to convey pain, woe and bleakness. Period. If that means machine gunning, artillery barrages or funeral dirges...in the same song...then that's what it means.
Not much point in trying to point out individual musical abilities in a record like this; it's just not about that shit. Suffice to say the band is doing what they want to do and nevermind the niceties. Same with the production, although for a trad black record this has a heft I don't normally hear. When there are extra instruments or voices to be heard, they are thrust in the mix in a way that dismays and discomforts. Which I have to assume is how it's supposed to be. The singer has the very black voice they all have, and is mixed very low.
Bottom line: REAL black metal makes me laugh. It's that simple. I can't take it seriously. But many people can, do and want it to stay the way they found it, with just enough movement to keep from becoming pointless. A band like Frost is what I believe these people crave. It's not the slightest bit commercial sounding, and is unlikely to attract the "wrong crowd", but it also has something a little new to add to the pantheon of black metal underground necrophilosophy. It's ugly, hateful and cold. Just the thing for whatever the fuck black metal types do when they are getting particularly nasty. Black Metal folks, jump. Everyone else, nah. Me? LOL.
