ALBUM REVIEW: The Inextricable Wandering – Ultha
ULTHA are a German band that play a heavily melancholic brand of black metal. In the four years since their formation, the band have managed to release two acclaimed records, as well as a couple of splits and EPs, the latest of which, Dismal Runs Pt. II, only came out in July of this year. Hot on the heels of this EP, the band have released their third full length album, The Inextricable Wandering, little over two months since the last EPs release. This record is a stunning piece of music, comprising of six songs spanning nearly seventy minutes in length. And luckily, it is excellent for its entire running time.
The Avarist starts the record on a high note. It’s ferocious, epic and vast, leaving little room for dull moments. Slowly building from minimalist guitar, bass and drums sections to much fuller ones, it gradually builds momentum, shifting from a snails pace to a solid, mid-paced tempo with plenty of atmospheric, shrill riffs, thunderous drums and a dense bass line. The vocals are an acerbic bellow, filled with plenty of piss and venom, whilst still having some sense of depth to them that makes them sound monstrous. This is a song driven by expert, intricate drumming and razor sharp guitar motifs, which are imbued with a solid ambience that it’s hard to find fault with. This is an energetic, sprawling track that sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly.
With Knives To The Throat and Hell In Your Heart is an arguably more ferocious and speed-driven affair, with just the right amount of discordance thrown into the proceedings for good measure. It sounds absolutely vast and grandiose, and is peppered liberally with tight and intricate lead guitar melodies that really help to bring this track to life and keep it engrossing throughout. The vocals sound tortured and melancholic in the extreme. The bleak, morose undertone of this song really works well alongside the music’s more ferocious and intense moments. The songs second half opts for a more hypnotic approach to the music, with a sparse, repetitive motif centred around some crashing drums, a deep guitar sound and a thick, crusty bass line. There’s still plenty of excellent riffs on offer, but the atmosphere of the track is more of the focal point until the tracks closing moments. There Is No Love, High Up In The Gallows, is, by this record’s standards, one of the shorter offerings, and with its mostly dark ambient based style, it’s a far cry from the visceral force of the prior two songs. Nonetheless, it’s a very powerful, emotive track that takes full advantage to allow this side of ULTHA‘s sound to come to the fore fully and carry a track from start to finish. It’s utterly sublime at points, and it proves to be a brilliant change of pace that adds more depth to the sound on this record.
Cyanide Lips, which kicks off the album’s second half, is, initially, deceptively softer, with cleaner guitar tones and major chords, with only slight hints of dissonance, making up the opening motif on this track. However, it quickly dives headlong into a ferocious and bestial track with a tortured and depressive vocal, sharp, grating guitar hooks and tight, precise drum patterns that make it seem all the more intense and fierce. That all important atmosphere is present, as always, giving this song a cavernous and vast sound that makes it all the more appealing. There’s a continual undertone of melancholy that marks this song, tinging thick and dense guitar hooks with bleak melodies and beautifully miserable sections that stick in the memory long after listening to them. This is one of the records main high points, and stands as one of the best tracks on this whole album.
We Only Speak in Darkness is another brief, ambience-centric affair, with some sparse, ringing guitar chords, basic percussive elements and the keyboards creating a sound that is sublime and angelic, with a powerful, misty vocal thrown in to add yet more gravitas to the music. It really helps to set the listener up well for the final track on the record, by stripping back the vast majority of the musical elements, building plenty of anticipation for the listener. I’m Afraid To Follow You There is an absolutely sprawling eighteen and a half minute epic that brings this album to a close in spectacular fashion. Beginning with an eerie, haunting guitar, and is soon followed with some dense, primal percussion and some subtle keyboard notes. The track doesn’t really burst into life until around the five minute mark, when it suddenly launches into a whirlwind of dark and vicious chord and powerful drumming, with the keyboard becoming more prominent and starting to leave a solid mark on this song. As it progresses, this track gradually becomes far more dense and ferocious, with some arid, harrowing screams coming in and adding a sense of urgency and emotive weight to the song. Towards it’s climactic motif, ULTHA head back down a more minimal route, reducing the speed significantly and opting for cleaner tones to build a bleak and sepulchral atmosphere, before diving straight back into the bestial and fierce sound that marked the middle of this track. As the music slowly begins to wind down in the last few minutes, ushering in the albums end, it once again returns to some cold, creepy chords that are similar to those that opened the song, bringing the sound full circle.
The Inextricable Wandering is absolutely spectacular. It’s a great piece of sublime yet depressive black metal that really makes use of a variety of different styles and levels of intensity in order to keep it interesting from start to finish. It proves to be a superb follow up to 2016’s Converging Sins, with the music often surpassing its predecessor. It would be unfair to classify this solely as a depressive black metal record, because there’s certainly plenty of dark ambient influences and visceral drive that you don’t really find in the music of a band like HAPPY DAYS. This is a powerful piece of music, and is arguably the best album this band has done to date.
Rating: 9/10
The Inextricable Wandering is out now via Century Media Records.
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