ALBUM REVIEW: The Savage Winds To Wisdom – Black Lava
Australia’s BLACK LAVA are proving to be not only one of the country’s fastest rising acts, but arguably one of its most abrasive as well. Considering that their ranks include members of excellent technical acts such as HADAL MAW and A MILLION DEAD BIRDS LAUGHING, the band’s debut album, Soul Furnace boasted a lot of promise in its grating and razor sharp sound, though not quite the frenzied inventiveness that many were probably expecting. Their latest record, The Savage Winds To Wisdom, captures all the punchy and powerful elements of their first record, but crucially delivers the kind of stringent and caustic sound that this band needed, pushing their sound, and indeed blackened death metal as a whole, into new territories musically.
Colour Of Death gently eases the listener into this record, with light, airy guitars building an atmosphere that quickly gives way to slow, domineering blackened death metal centred upon dense hooks, authoritative drumming and jarring flourishes that add a grating edge. The swampy basslines and bellicose, bellowing vocals add a rawer element to the slicker, more focused sound of the guitars, creating a dark and ominous opening gambit that grabs the listener’s attention. Dark Legacy – a shorter but nonetheless biting effort – pushes the tight, progressive guitars into more rhythmic terrain, allowing for interesting fills and frenetic passages, but mostly sticking to a monolithic, mid-paced style complete with caustic vocal delivery, providing a leaner interpretation of the opener’s core sound. Wrapped In Filth adopts the same measured tempo as the first two offerings, but scales back some of the jarring leads and replaces them with a melodic, black metal-indebted sound and dramatic, rumbling vocals, crafting a song that is immersive whilst still capturing the intensity and inventiveness that preceded it.
Unsheathing Nightmares takes the catchier sound of the last song to its natural conclusion, with hypnotic guitars and meaty chugs stripping away almost all of the demented touches that characterised earlier songs, with only a few energetic, feral bursts hinting at the stringent and punishing qualities of the other tracks and developing something far more concise. Summoning Shadows, with its murky guitars and intricate drumming, is built upon dirge-like rhythms and sees the leads at perhaps their most rabid and imaginative, abruptly shifting from one great riff to the next, whilst sinister and emotive vocals carve a visceral path through the music, serving as the aggressive counterpoint to the accessible sound of the last track.
Ironclad Sarcophagus veers between the ethereal guitars of Wrapped In Filth and the denser, technical death metal that has been at the heart of this record, utilising the drama-laden vocals to make this even more captivating, embracing a bleaker yet brutal sound. The galloping, juggernaut drums of Pagan Dust are the song’s backbone around which the razor sharp guitars, barked vocals and sludgy bass are expertly interwoven, creating a layered sound that meshes the engrossing sides of both the guitars and vocals with the percussive intensity that has been the hallmark of the drums on this whole album.
Sanguis Lupus blends together hazy, cleaner tones with the discordant guitar work, bringing together the blackened death and progressive elements a lot more seamlessly and constructing a sound that is distinct from the majority of the previous tracks without sacrificing the blistering hooks, gargantuan undercurrent and noxious musicianship of some of this album’s most extreme outings. The Savage Winds To Wisdom expands upon the album’s core formula, namely slow builds, dissonant, biting hooks, feral vocals and precise, speed-driven drums, and draws it out until it’s far longer than the fairly economical songs that came before it, peppering in a few minimalist sections to break up the unrelenting ferocity, lending this a palpable ambience that informs the sound just as much as its harshness and pummelling rhythms, finally descending into a fully frenzied and noisy conclusion to cap this album off brilliantly.
The differences between this album and Soul Furnace are quite pronounced; although their debut was a solid record in its own right, the sound on offer was a little closer to standard blackened death metal fare with only a few hints of the imaginative music that would follow it, with a much more rhythmic style and very few experimental touches, something that The Savage Winds To Wisdom possesses in spades. There are very few bands opting to write riffs in such a rabid and intricate way whilst still remaining incredibly catchy and polished, showing that even at its most noxious and discordant, extreme metal can stick in the listener’s memory. There’s so little fat to trim here that another album in this style, or even one that takes this sharp and searing approach to its natural conclusion, could very well prove to be a game changer for black and death metal.
Rating: 9/10
The Savage Winds To Wisdom is out now via Season Of Mist.
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