HUMANART - (Further) Into the Depths
Dark Age Works
I've listen to so much blackened metal of late that I have blisters on my arms and my face looks sun burned. And so here we are again with another one. This band HUMANART hails from Portugal and according to their promo info are the oldest (or one of) black metal act from that great nation. Really, they're older than CORPUS CHRISTII and MOONSPELL? Well in all honesty I can't say I'm up on knowledge of all Portuguese black metal goings on. I did pick up an old ALASTOR CD last year.
Moving on, HUMANART started out back in the late 1990s but their first full length didn't come out until 2014. Prior to that they had a couple of short form releases. Five years later we have this their second album. Now there's some good points about this release as well as some cliche moments. But the reason why black metal has survived so long is because it broke up into various sub-genres. Each of those segments have a huge dedicated fan base. That's something which the nay-saying elites in the mainstream metal media never understood. They simply went with whatever their advertisers paid them to say as well as the latest watered down hiptard trends they followed.
So for starters HUMANART sound like they're still in the 90's as in pre-symphonic BM days. The music has a completely raw vicious feel to it which once was an imposing sound. Their vocalist has a spot on Maniac singing (actually a venomous rasp) quality. There are also a few times there sound crosses paths with old MAYHEM. Even with that said the guy who mastered this at Sweden's Necromorbus Studio,Tore Stjerna, has also worked with a few big name Finnish and Swedish BM acts. So there's a heavy cliche Scandinavian black metal style going on here.
There are a few nuanced moments where the band steps out of the box. With the exception of the tremolo picked rhythms, blast beated drum assaults and ear piecing vocals there's a few straight metal guitar solos. Later on in the songs the band taps into some rocking groove. As far as the music's subject matter goes they're truly a hateful bunch and can add some slower ambiance (behind some hellish wailing) to break the cliche monotony.
All in all this is a decent release which held my attention simply because I was expecting it to go down hill but it never did. To all of you black metal aficionados of the old ways. HUMANART are still holding onto the torch albeit not in some snow covered Nordic wilderness.
https://humanart.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Humanart/
No comments:
Post a Comment