ALBUM REVIEW: Eve – Balmog
Soutomaior’s BALMOG, along with fellow countrymen TEITANBLOOD, are easily one of the best black metal acts to have surfaced from Spain in the last decade or so. Although the band’s origins stretch all the way back to 2003, it wasn’t until 2012 that their debut album, Testimony of the Abominable, first saw the light of day. With the two albums that came after it, 2015’s Svmma Fide and 2018’s Vacvvm, it became incredibly clear that this was a band that only seemed to be improving and developing their sound with age. The same is definitely true of their latest fourth album, Eve, an album that serves as the creative zenith of the band’s output to date, as well as an incredibly strong contender for album of the year.
Horror In Circuitu, a short instrumental piece built around hazy guitars and primal drumming, serves as a great intro for the album before launching into Birth Of Feral, a song that makes great use of dissonant, but nonetheless catchy, guitar work and bellicose vocals, giving this music a disjointed feel that sounds polished and intricate, whilst peppering in some more chaotic moments for good measure.
Senreira sees that more cacophonous element in the band’s sound come more prominently to the fore, with frenetic drumming underpinning the grating riffs and emotive, feral vocals extremely well. Much like the previous track, there’s still a focused edge to the music, giving it a tightness that is at odds with the atonal nature of the bulk of the music.
Slander has a slower, more deliberate pace, and brings back the excellent, murky guitar sound from the opening track, along with plenty of groove and some memorable, melodic flourishes to create a dark but engrossing slab of chunky black metal that injects a generous dose of the sort of hard rock guitar work that has appeared sporadically earlier on the record, along with the more nauseating and urgent moments, with impressive results.
Agnus Dei may only be a short track, but it leaves its mark. It’s a far more experimental, almost electronic instrumental track that bridges the gaps between the album’s two halves perfectly, with the foreboding ambience acting as a good pallet cleanser that sets the listener up for the following track Desacougo well. This is a whirlwind of dizzying guitar hooks, acerbic, growling vocals and punishingly precise drums that boasts both some of the album’s more aggressive and borderline psychedelic moments, with the brilliant use of opaque distortion on the guitars abruptly turning this song from a visceral one to a much more hypnotic experience.
Zohar continues in a similar vein, showing how a dark and ethereal guitar sound can be just as effective at drawing listeners in as frenzied aural assaults. It’s got a confident, hard rock swagger to it, and when coupled with the solid galloping drums, it provides a much more accessible take on modern black metal, along with some of the most imaginative guitar work on the whole album.
Carrion Heart, a magnificent, mid tempo, slow burning offering with a dense, rumbling bassline, thunderous drumming and a more subdued guitar and vocal performance, gradually develops from a brooding piece of music with a palpable classic heavy metal side to it into a bleak, monstrous monolith of a track that is thoroughly gripping throughout. The final brief instrumental song on the album, Lume, serves as a final heavily ambient moment that brings the listener down from the climactic, dramatic highs of its predecessor with a fairly spartan atmospheric closing effort that, despite sounding great, feels unnecessary after the previous track.
With Eve, BALMOG may just have produced their most stunning album to date. Taking all the very best elements from black metal’s more chaotic corners, and combining them with plenty of great, experimental distortion and a sharp, modern sounding production, they’ve created what will arguably go on to be regarded as one of the best black metal records of the year. The excellent blend of black metal, hard rock, ambient and progressive flourishes that are spread throughout this album all work extremely well, with no one song- other than Lume, which, despite its haunting sound, feels more of an anti-climax after the fantastic Carrion Heart – feeling weak or out of place, making it clear that BALMOG only seem to be improving with each subsequent album they put out.
Rating: 9/10
Eve is out now via War Anthem Records.
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