ALBUM REVIEW: Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry – Underdark

What exactly is black metal? To some, it’s a set of rigid sonic rules that confine it to a very limited template. To others, like Nottingham collective UNDERDARK with their debut album Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry, it’s an ethos as much as a sonic template. One that rejects conventions and confidently goes its own way, folding in genres as disparate as screamo, post-hardcore and black metal itself. Their sound is perhaps best described as loosely post black metal but that doesn’t truly do them justice. 

Qeres opens the album softly, with clean guitars and bass that lull listeners into a false sense of security. The peace is soon shattered though in a barrage of drums and pained shrieks that build into a rasping delivery delivered atop blast beats and swirling guitars. Although it does utilise the more usual elements of black metal, there’s also plenty of difference; vocalist Abi employs some lower growls midway through and in various points throughout the album, and the guitar work leans more towards blackgaze than frostbitten wastelands. 

This is something that’s echoed throughout the album, with varying structures and tempos to go along with the varied vocal delivery, with tracks such as Qeres and Skeleton Queen both mixing in spoken word passages. There’s plenty of room for these explorations; the songs are all on the longer side, not dipping below the six minute mark, allowing time to shift through different moods and soundscapes. Around the halfway mark of the title track, we’re treated to an acoustic section that while initially calming, becomes more unsettling as Abi’s rasp is introduced and gradually builds into a cathartic release to close out the song. 

We’re then treated to Coyotes, and while the opening melody is somewhat similar to the acoustic motif of the previous song, it’s accompanied by Dan’s slow, understated drumming. This erupts into a now familiar rage, though at an almost glacial pace initially. The opening motif also gradually evolves throughout, growing more urgent as the song progresses to its climactic midpoint. The clouds break at this point and we’re treated to an almost dystopian sounding blackgaze moment. 

This feeling isn’t too dissimilar from the themes of the song itself; dealing with the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the US at the Mexican border, it’s excoriating in both sound and topic. Thematically, there’s many different notes hit across the album. Qeres and the title track are intensely personal stories, with Our Bodies… touching on opiate withdrawal, whereas With Ashen Hands Around Our Throats looks at the Grenfell disaster and how it was allowed to happen, with the relaxation of rules around housing that let landlords and housing authorities get away with offering substandard housing that is sometimes uninhabitable. The album culminates in Skeleton Queen, a song about burnout that culminates in howls of “die Abi, die” which are at odds with the lush instrumentation that closes out the song and album. 

With just five songs in the 36 minute runtime, we’re treated to longform explorations of sound and emotion every time, with song structures varying and never sticking to the typical verse-chorus-verse format. It makes for an engrossing listen that shows clear growth since their earlier days as a band while still retaining and honing the sound they’re known for. Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry is a bold statement and almost certainly one of this year’s essential black metal albums, not only for the quality of the songs themselves but for the band’s ethos and refusal to pigeonhole themselves, taking inspiration from a broad range of styles. What could be more black metal than that?

Rating: 9/10

Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry is set for release on July 30th via Surviving Sounds (UK), Through Love Records (EU) and Tridroid Records (US/CAN).

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