EP REVIEW: Pillars of Salt – Balmog

Having been on the scene sine 2003, BALMOG have established a specific way of doing things in their music. their focus and constant desire to create something genuine and truly dark, has allowed them to mould their take on black metal. With this mini release, Pillars of Salt takes the concept of one continuous track and plays with what can be done in an eighteen minute span.

Immediately, any listener will agree there’s an instant impending dread in the air, an ambience of menace and malevolence. A tapping symbol, a growling bass that hangs in the air, notes lingering bar after bar, as a thick static raises itself into motion. It’s all working towards setting the scene, and after labouring on your attention the guitars finally break the tension, with hypnotic and mystical motions.

There’s an unusual mixture of things going on in Pillars of Salt; Through the decision to make this one continuous track, there’s time to bleed ideas into each other, keeping the doom and horror in every moment. Whispers erratically slither through your ears, while Balc’s vocals bellow out in increasingly tormented reverberations. Stylistically it becomes many beasts in the time it’s given to marinate- it begins as something closer to psychedelic rock, dripping in more doom elements, and slides into a wonderful mix of death and black metal as things become so much more bloody and violent.

That destructive feeling gives was to desolate, an expansive, open musing for an increasingly distant guitar melody to circle over and over, like a mystic incantation, heralding in the new motion of sound. By the nine-minute mark, this already feels like a truly epic journey, as things take a more synthesised tone, a droning note holding out before the battering next instalment.

This fresh wave of Pillars of Salt is much more embellished, the guitars taking on more extravagant solos and the vocals becoming ever more bombastic. Wailing strings rip through the track relentlessly, often stirring, but mostly towering; drummer Virus hammers the skins like his life depends on it, and the continuous, nasty basslines from Morg contains the trio’s music in this hellish scape that they’ve created.

Considering how long this track is, it’s actually very impressive how immersive it is; you’ll be hard pressed to find a moment that doesn’t captivate, never lingering in one idea for too long, expressing motifs throughout that connect the whole piece without relying on one motion to be the ‘best bit’.

Our ending comes at such velocity, battering and beautiful it’s practically spiritual, it’s a joyous release as everything rips and tears itself to pieces, and leaves you lingering on the very last words, still revelling in what you’ve listened to. You’ll no doubt want to take the ride all over again.

Without question, Pillars of Salt a very well thought out and well executed piece of work. BALMOG know exactly what they want to achieve in their music, and creating such a huge, expansive, surreal and dark record without adhering to any rules. With that mindset, what’s been achieved is something wholly surreal, enigmatic and mysterious that will draw listens from all areas of the metal community.

Rating: 7/10

Pillars of Salt is out now via War Anthem Records.

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