EP REVIEW: Covenants Of Salt – Balmog
Although they have been creating music since 2003, Spain’s BALMOG have been on a creative high since the release of their 2018 record Vacvvm. This quartet’s brand of dark, melodic black metal tinged with psychedelic elements has served them well, with their most recent album, 2021’s Eve, being one of the most cohesively magnificent records to come out of Spain’s small but impressive extreme metal scene. Even the band’s shorter releases, such as their latest EP Covenants Of Salt, possess more imagination and style and character than some full-length albums do. This new EP, intended as a companion piece for 2020’s Pillars Of Salt EP, follows a similar format to its predecessor; a single, sprawling track with lots of great musicianship and dripping with atmosphere, it’s yet another brilliant offering that adds even more depth to the band’s already stunning back catalogue.
Starting in an incredibly atmospheric and ominous fashion, Covenants Of Salt quickly bursts into life with thunderous percussion, minimalistic, droning guitars and haunting, ethereal vocals, all of which contribute to the hypnotic and ambience-drenched sound that this song kicked off with. From here the music gathers pace and ferocity, with the vocals taking a harsher turn and the drums becoming more intricate, pushing the music into darker territories, before finally reaching its chaotic, visceral zenith. Frenetic rhythms, demented vocals and blistering guitar work all add to the cacophonous feel of the music, whilst retaining the lean melodies and the hazy, almost psychedelic touches that have been hinted at earlier in the song, adding murky flourishes throughout the track.
Huge, bombastic keyboards, sinister choir accompaniments and a sharper, brooding approach to the guitars start the second half of this track off on a high note, further pushing things into a more grandiose and borderline experimental sound, with denser, rhythmic drums and guitars allowing the wide-ranging vocals to shine, although there’s some excellently feral and aggressive moments peppered liberally in amongst the more reserved parts. This constant ebb and flow between bestial hooks and more dramatic, cavernous ones works extremely well, making it all the more immersive and impressive as a result.
It’s tempting to disregard EPs and demos as mere stop gaps between albums – a short release intended to keep interest in a band high whilst the finishing touches are put on a new album – but hearing how much attention to detail has been placed upon this EP, and the fact that it is clearly connected, both stylistically and thematically, to an earlier release, shows that BALMOG aren’t ones to let their creative guard down with any of their releases, with a lot of the music present here so tight and immersive that it could very well be an album worthy piece of music. Both Pillars Of Salt and now Covenants Of Salt stand as some of the band’s most ambitious and bleakly grandiose material to date, showing that they are just as capable of crafting expansive and truly atmospheric black metal as they are at creating the sort of sharp, punchy fare that is dominant in Eve‘s sound, continuing a hot streak that shows no signs of waning at any point in the near future.
Rating: 9/10
Covenants Of Salt is out now via BlackSeed Productions/War Anthem Records.
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