ALBUM REVIEW: We Have Proved Death – Somniate
Prague’s SOMNIATE may only have formed back in 2017, but their music boasts a surprising level of maturity and an eclectic, energetic take on black metal that genuinely sets the band apart from many of their contemporaries both in the Czech Republic and internationally. Their stunning first album, The Meyrinkian Slumber, coupled an unerring freneticism with precise, memorable hooks and a crystalline sound quite unlike all but a few bands, managing to embrace both discordant and melodic components within what was an incredibly impressive debut. Now, three years on, the band return with We Have Proved Death, an album that, if anything, doubles down on the formula laid down on its predecessor, trimming away what little fat was present upon it and in turn producing one of the most magnificent black metal records of the year.
I Am Here And You Are Distant is a dramatic start to proceedings, interwoven with discordant guitars and cavernous drums, with sonorous spoken word passages further adding to the cinematic quality of this track. The song eventually lurches into a chaotic, avant-garde sound that is even more compelling, with the vocals taking on a demented bent, matching the intensity of the music and bringing a brilliant harshness into the mix. A Lamb At False Dawn adopts melodic leads and thunderous bass, but doesn’t fully shrug off the murkier, dissonant flourishes that made the opener so memorable, instead crafting a catchier take on that style while retaining the excellent, bellicose howls and blistering rhythms. It’s an incredibly visceral but lean slab of blackened death metal with a noticeably progressive undercurrent.
The song’s spacey, ambience-drenched closing moments bleeds seamlessly into The Statue Of Mirrors, a monolithic and jarring piece of black metal with some extremely intricate and precise musicianship on all fronts, from the slick guitar hooks to the juggernaut throb of the drums, with the fantastically emotive and expressive vocals covering a broad range from arid shrieks through to sombre groans. Again they compliment the frenetic and imaginative approach of the music that backs them with a venom and unhinged aggression of their own.
Black Soundless Sugar shifts into a completely different direction musically, with the pace reducing to a relative crawl, and much more layered and almost jazzy compositions allowing for some delicate but emphatic performances before gradually morphing into a darker, harder offering with some biting, hypnotic leads and belligerent, feral rhythms underpinning equally fierce, throaty vocals. It takes the music back into far more familiar territory, with the slow burning style helping to make this even more engrossing.
Where that track was arguably one of the album’s best efforts, Non-You is by far its most caustic, with the guitars, drums and bass blending together in a dizzying whirlwind of intense, frenzied brutality that focuses solidly on the band’s more discordant and monstrous elements, with a few slower but nonetheless searing moments peppered throughout. The vocals are perhaps at their most sinister too, jumping from primal barks to arid, acidic snarls, once again elevating the music with a bombastic style that matches it perfectly. We Have Proved Death is a brief burst of brutality that condenses the harshness and ferocity of the preceding five tracks into a faster, and all too short, affair that magnificently caps the albums off with one final stab of freneticism.
As far as the more extreme end of black metal is concerned, We Have Proved Death may very well be one of the stand out records of the year. With this album, SOMNIATE have not only produced their best record to date, building upon the many strengths of The Meyrinkian Slumber, but they have arguably made one of the most cacophonous and acerbic records of the year, capturing the unbridled dissonance of PORTAL, the experimental, avant-garde flourishes of IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, and mixing these elements together with just the right amount of polish and melody to make it a far punchier and more catchy iteration of that style of black metal. That they have progressed to this degree as songwriters in just three years is impressive, and the fact that this is only their second record means that they’ve still got plenty of time to craft even more inventive and immersive albums in the future. And if the scope and scale of the music present here is anything to go by, SOMNIATE are more than capable of making whatever they put out next their magnum opus.
Rating: 9/10
We Have Proved Death is out now via Lavadome Productions.
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