ALBUM REVIEW: All Pain As Penance – Abduction

Derby’s ABDUCTION have been making small but sizeable waves in the UK black metal scene since their formation. Being incredibly prolific over the course of the last three years, the one man act have already released three full lengths, a demo and an EP, with the second full length – A Crown Of Curses – turning a lot of heads within the UK scene. Their performance at Bloodstock last year was arguably one of the highlights of the festival, with the dense, nauseating sound working just as well live as it does on record. The new album from ABDUCTION, All Pain As Penance, further refines the bands sound, and manages to surpass last years record with ease, making it one of the bands most impressive records to date.

ABDUCTION waste no time easing the listener into All Pain As Penance as Infinite Ancient Hexes leaps out of the speakers at a breakneck pace, setting a grating, vicious tone straight away. It’s a ferocious wall of noise, with dense, impenetrable guitars and cacophonous, thunderous drums backing up some truly caustic vocals. There’s a few sparse, yet well placed keyboards, which add some atmosphere to the proceedings and add another element to the already vast and domineering sound. This is an unrelentingly fierce song, and makes for an excellent, dissonant opening effort, grabbing the listeners attention immediately. Following track Ultra Terrestrial makes use of droning, almost industrial noise and heady keyboard sections, before launching into another visceral slab of black metal, with some tight, melody driven leads, machine gun precise drumming, thick, crushing rhythms and sharp, acidic vocals. There’s plenty of more measured, mid-tempo sections that create a monolithic feel which breaks up the overarching aggression, giving this song a lot of musical variety. It’s a short, sharp shock of a song, bur it leaves it’s mark and doesn’t stick around for any longer than it needs to.

Convulsing At Baalbek is a far longer track, and it manages to make use of its extended running time to fill every moment of it with great music. Jarring, discordant lead guitar hooks, coupled with dark, foreboding rhythms, make for a great guitar sound that really raises the bar significantly and inject plenty of interesting moments into the song. Cleaner tones are even utilised, bridging the gap between the songs first and second halves with a great motif that is shrouded in ethereal atmosphere, and leads into the final, more mid paced section of the song seamlessly. This song starts of incredibly energetic and rabid, but ultimately opts for a more reserved approach in order to allow for fuller chords, steady, authoritative drumming and soaring, hellish howls to carry the music, proving that ABDUCTION is brilliant and imaginative even at their slower and more sprawling moments.

Embattled is another brief aural assault that doesn’t mess around with the four and a half minutes it has to leave an impression on the listener. It gradually builds some bleak, powerful keyboard parts together, which make for a short interlude between the albums first and second sections. It’s a noisy, ambient song with a few minimalist vocals, at points sounding absolutely punishing, without having to resort to speed driven, violent riffs to leave a lasting impact on the listener. It’s a great display of the depth of ABDUCTION‘s sound, and shows that the sound can be gruelling and harsh even when the music is stripped down to even the barest elements. Prayer Of Electrocution is a razor sharp, melody driven song which boasts some really great guitar parts throughout. With the drums and vocals taking a back seat, the guitars are really allowed to carry the song and be far more intricate and groove-laden than they have been at many points earlier on the record. It’s a straight forward, no nonsense Black Metal song with some brilliant guitar work and a great, grating tone which adds a lot of weight to the sound, without drowning the riffs in a sea of distortion. It’s got a great balance between catchy musicianship peppered with melodic flourishes, and a more caustic, raw sound that is sure to please anyone who appreciates black metal.

All Pain As Penance‘s penultimate track, Seven Apparitions of Suffering, is an unflinchingly harsh, powerful song with an epic edge that makes the whole song sound gargantuan from the very first note. Steady, impressive drumming makes a solid foundation for huge, razor sharp guitars and arid vocals, which soar over the rest of the music and complement the robust, vicious guitar work really well. This is a track characterised by aggression, but with a noticeable melancholic undertone, which adds plenty of emotive weight to these energetic and frenetic hooks. It’s yet another brilliant song which acts as a great, climactic note to the record, and sets the listener up perfectly for the seventh and last song on the album.

The Funeral Of Cosmic Mastery initially builds around some ambient noise elements, before launching headlong into what is arguably one of the more ferocious tracks on the record, with some truly monstrous sounding guitars, sonorous, thunderous drumming and bellicose shrieks which all make the song, as a whole, sound fantastic. There’s a few thicker, more groove orientated guitar parts that are more indicative of death metal, and this aspect being thrown into the sound really helps to set this song apart from many of the ones that have preceded it, giving this fairly lengthy offering far more riffs to work with. Shifting between faster and slower tempos seamlessly and making great use of some slight, yet palpable atmospheric flourishes, it proves to be not just one of the best, but also one of the most eclectic songs on the whole record, bringing a variety of different influences and styles prevalent in the bands sound, meaning that there isn’t a dull moment on this last track, meaning that when the song, and the album, come to an abrupt end, the listener is eager for more.

All Pain As Penance is a brilliant album, without a single song feeling out of place or placed on the record to pad the album out. It’s a definite improvement on A Crown Of Curses, with the music sounding more diverse and tight, and it’s genuinely impressive that this music was written and recorded by a single person, as the music is diverse and has plenty of depth that you don’t find with many one man black metal acts. It may be a little too early to say, but this could prove to be one of the stand out black metal albums of the year. Now, with a full touring band, and confirmed appearances at Black Tor Gathering, Darkness Over Cumbria and Atmosfest over the coming months, as well as a few headlining club gigs in Leeds and Nottingham, ABDUCTION looks poised to take the UK scene, and indeed the wider black metal world, by storm.

Rating: 9/10

All Pain As Penance is set for release March 29th via Inferna Profundus Records. 

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