VALLE CRUCIS - Iron & Blood
Pagan Pride Records/Narcoleptica Productions
Despite having some truly stand out and aggressive leaning acts over the past few decades. The US black metal scene still gets knocked sometimes for relying too much on the scraps of their European BM neighbors. Far be it of me to trash my own nation's contributions to black metal. I do agree we have some copycats amongst the pioneers. I don't need to list the good ones since if you are a USBM fan then you should know our nation's great output of blackness. As far as the copycats, bandwagon jumpers and hipsters well fuck them.
With that said here we have VALLE CRUCIS a two piece blackened act from South Carolina. They started out just a few years ago but both members are veterans of their local music scene. This release here, Iron & Blood, is their full length debut. Prior to this they did put out a self titled EP in 2017. Unfortunately I never heard it. Be that as it may VALLE CRUCIS' brand of black metal is familiar to the point of which you could imagine the town of Bergan in Norway being the sister city of where these guys call home. I believe it's Laurens, South Carolina.
I say that because the opening cut, "March of the Night" has a riff package that Abbath could've put forth. But after that the band does introduce more of their extreme selves into their sound. Albeit there's still a lot of IMMORTAL or KAMPFAR cold, grim and frosty style riffs being produced which by the way are damm good. Trust me I'm not complaining especially on a cut like "Soul Fucker" which divides itself between a slow crawling atmosphere of hate and into an unforgiving riff salad of frostbite.
VALLE CRUCIS are a band that takes some past influences and reworks them into their own vision. Their songs on here have that melodic black metal touch from Scandinavia plus plenty of USBM aggression as well as malice. Gotta love the vocals which are of that graveyard mausoleum phantom style. So yeah this is a great USBM release. But I don't care for the cover artwork.
https://www.facebook.com/Paganpriderecords
https://vallecrucisblackmetal.bandcamp.com/album/iron-blood
https://www.facebook.com/ValleCrucisBlackMetal
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