ALBUM REVIEW: Natural Selection – Viserion
New York’s VISERION may only have released their debut EP, Death Dealer, at the beginning of 2020, but the band have already managed to make a solid impression with their music. Raw and caustic, their sound brings together not just black metal, but also elements of death metal and grindcore, giving them an acerbic and bellicose sound that is not too far removed from war metal acts like REVENGE at points, whilst adding in some powerful slower sections that make for a sound that is as atmospheric at times as it is grating. Their first full-length album, Natural Selection, develops this formula further, and proves to be, if anything, darker and more aggressive than the EP that preceded it.
Desolation bursts into life with a flurry of buzzsaw guitars, frenetic drumming and shrill, caustic snarls, going straight for the jugular as opposed to easing the listener into the album. The intensity, coupled with the rawness of the production, makes for an unnerving and visceral start to what turns out to be an exceptionally acerbic album. Tortured Soul is, if anything, even more aggressive and chaotic, with the blistering pace lending a sense of urgency and a rabid, borderline grindcore degree of ferocity. Other than a short reprieve where the tempo slows and the music takes on a broader, more ethereal style towards the middle of the track, this is wall to wall cacophony, being as savage as it is at times brooding.
Vaporized, with its catchier, slicker guitar work, pushes the music into punchier territories, without stripping away any of the jarring elements in the vocals and drums on the preceding two offerings. The vocals begin to incorporate thick gutturals in amongst the acidic shrieks, something that, along with the excellent hooks, adds some depth to the album’s sound, whilst being an incredibly engrossing, hook-laden piece of music. Natural Selection has a more intricate approach musically, and a slower pace and cleaner guitar tone that creates a bleak but thoroughly hypnotic feel, interspersed with meatier vocal deliveries, energetic drum fills and disjointed sections that help the music retain the primal edge that has run through the core of this record.
The Wraith, featuring Trevor Strnad of THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER on vocals, is a bestial slab of razor sharp black metal with suitably grating flourishes and venom-soaked vocals that play to both Strnad and VISERION vocalist Benedetto Marvill‘s strengths, providing a great call and response within the singing that works extremely well. Abandoned, another coarse, primitive black metal affair, has a huge guitar sound that shifts between massive chords and discordant, speed-driven passages, a contrast of styles that gives this song an unpredictable and powerful side that makes it all the more appealing.
Malevolent lives up to its title, with crawling motifs and decidedly more frenzied ones injecting a sinister aspect to the track’s sound, with the tighter drums and spartan vocal lines allowing the riffs to carry much of this track. Much like the previous six tracks, it’s a domineering and inventive cut of claustrophobic, raw black metal that helps bring the album to a close on a note that is every bit as feral as the one that it opened on.
By no means is this album trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to black metal, but it is nonetheless a brilliant debut album that has just the right amount of rawness as far as the production goes, and an equal dose of extremity in the musicianship, to ensure that it’ll draw in diehard black metal fans. The heady death metal and grindcore elements that are peppered throughout this album only add to its appeal, making this album jarring and monstrous in a way that quite a lot of underground black metal acts rarely achieve. It’s unflinchingly harsh, and great from start to finish, and easily one of the more feral black metal records to come out this year.
Rating: 8/10
Natural Selection is set for release on August 13th via self-release.
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