ALBUM REVIEW: Soul Furnace – Black Lava
Australia’s BLACK LAVA may only have formed within the last year, but already the Melbourne-based four-piece have managed to make a significant name for themselves. Consisting of current and former members of such celebrated acts as HADAL MAW, NE OBLIVISCARIS and BLACKHELM, the band had garnered a lot of attention before they released even a note of music, as is to be expected when a group of musicians of this calibre and talent form a band together. Their first offering, Soul Furnace, more than lives up to those lofty expectations, proving to not only be a late contender for album of the year, but also one of the more impressive debut albums of recent years.
Origins, with its haunting, eerie atmosphere and thundering drum sound, proves to be a very powerful start to the record. It sets a bleak and ominous tone straight away that draws the listener in, perfectly paving the way for Aurora. This is a steady, authoritative track with a solid drum sound and rumbling basslines that tinge it with a confident, swaggering hard rock undercurrent, with the more melancholic touches of the guitars and the hellish bark of the vocals adding another layer to the sound that lends a darker edge to what is for the most part an incredibly driven affair.
Black Blizzard possesses a quicker pace, jarring hooks and sudden tempo changes which give this a far more unhinged sound. It ducks and weaves between chaotic sections and expansive, slower ones with ease, resulting in an interesting slab of imaginative blackened death metal. Baptised In Ice is an excellent piece of energetic death ‘n’ roll; it utilises a tight, punishing drum sound, visceral vocals and meaty guitars that couple a groove-laden style with bursts of discordance to great effect. Eye Of The Moon is a mid-paced brooding song, built around ethereal, melodic guitars, arid vocals and intricate, impressive drums, all of which lean more heavily into the band’s black metal influences without fully stripping away the forceful death metal elements within their sound.
The album’s second half kicks off with Northern Dawn, a song built around pounding, percussive drums, huge, chord-based guitar work, and feral, emotive vocals. Blending the best elements of death metal’s fast and furious side with punk beats and a sprawling, dramatic side to the tone that makes it all the more beguiling, it’s a hard, but engrossing track that manages to be punchy despite it being one of the album’s longest offerings. Necrocatacomb sees a more spidery and jarring edge from the guitars, a feature that helps to establish this song with a relative dissonance that counterpoints the denser mix of the drums and bass, with the caustic delivery of the vocals accentuating these more acerbic qualities.
Nightshade takes this discordance and applies it to a far more standard death metal formula with excellent results. Coming across as a blackened take on the style of ENTOMBED, without overdoing the sludgy guitar tone as many bands have a tendency to do, it’s another fantastic brew of black and death metal, with both components complementing as opposed to battling with each other for attention. Soul Furnace, much like the album’s opening salvo, closes the record with an ominous and foreboding track that couples tight, focused rhythms with hauntingly airy passages from the guitar and a wider vocal range running the gamut from arid snarls to sinister, wraith-like whispers. It makes for a hypnotic and magnificent conclusion to an equally brilliant record.
Over the last few years, blackened death metal has seemingly been going through a creative resurgence, with many bands adding new elements and flavours into the mix, rather than opting to get by on being a sub par BEHEMOTH, as was the trend in preceding years. With Soul Furnace, BLACK LAVA could very well cement themselves at the cutting edge of this musical renaissance. Coupling the muscular, punishing rhythms that underpin this album with a more ethereal and expressive approach to writing the riffs has paid dividends, and the equally bellicose vocals, peppered with some impressive, subtle touches, complement the darker side of this music. And most importantly, this is a fantastic debut that lays some seriously solid foundations for BLACK LAVA and their musical future.
Rating: 9/10
Soul Furnace is out now via Season Of Mist.
Like BLACK LAVA on Facebook.