Liturgy

Renihilation

Transcendental pagan black metal from the snowy peaks of… Brooklyn | 20 Buck Spin

I had to scratch the word “hipster” from my original tagline because of its negative connotations: There really has to be a better way of talking about the scruffy Brooklyn guys who, instead of sucking up to crud like Stephen Malkmus or Ben Gibbard, have taken it upon themselves to give dear old black metal a dusting off and shaking up, in the process generating, well, a scene. Krallice, Black Anvil, Malkuth and now, Liturgy, whose label, 20 Buck Spin, plumps for the formulation “indie black metal.” Works for me, as long we don’t start with Malkmus/Fenriz or Varg/Gibbard hybrids. Actually, fuck it—knock yourselves out.

So, Liturgy—whose debut album here is a pretty confident piece of work, comparable to Krallice (whose mainman Colin Marston produced) for the arty-avant bent the guitars here unmistakably take—are more rewarding than Krallice in that the final effect is not one of geeks out of their element trying their hand at black metal and coming up generic, like Krallice tend to do (Ed note: Joe Gross disagrees, pg 91). The model for Renihilation is Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal, though less mournful and more abstract. Here swirls of raw, ethereal guitar noise lift like a blinding snowstorm, and remain suspended in mid-air, somewhere between earth and the higher realm, like Liturgy are looking for light. Initially beguiling, it’s soon claustrophobic, as you find yourself yearning for some low end, some earthy corollary to the transcendentalist high end shimmering; a solution Black Anvil, on the other hand—following Enslaved and begriming them—have down. Regardless, this is a fine debut, perhaps a little abstract for some, but endowed with its own fitful, spiritually epileptic character.

—Daniel Lukes

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