Pulverised Records

Fourteen years between albums is a long time for any band. It's especially a long time when it's only the band's second album. The Black's first album, the deathly dark The Priest of Satan, was a surprisingly awesome album released in 1994 that, to my knowledge, didn't get much recognition. To this day it seems to have somehow been all but forgotten by many, though there are the few who remember it and still play it. I've got it somewhere, but haven't listened to it in literally probably 6 or more years, so comparisions between that album and the new one will not be made as I've forgotten everything important about it except that I was impressed by it.

When finding that The Black had released a second album after 14 years of who-knows-what, I was interested. I didn't know if I should expect another impressive ass kicking, or be generally skeptical of a band that, as far as I knew, had either been broken up for many years and decided to reform, or had just been lazy for 14 years.

Alongside Death immediately opens with a violent massacre of a track called "On the Descent to Hell" that literally sounds about as horrendous as one might imagine a descent to Hell would sound, with blasting speed and deathlike screams announcing murder and damnation, and filthy guitars right underneath. It's a short and to-the-point track, the shortest on the album at under two minutes, but it gets a lot done in that time. In my case, it left me psyched and begging for more.

The songs following the opening track employ the same raw and harsh elements as the first, and don't sound too dissimilar to the sounds of 90's Norwegian black metal, though this is coming from Sweden. Blast beats, cave-dwelling death shrieks, raw, overdriven and dissonant guitars are in no short supply on this record. Dynamics aren't too dramatic or surprising, with most songs having their moments of slow, spaced-out, atmosphere building, and some higher tempo fury. A few songs plod on slowly and without noticeable direction, taking up a bit too much time on the album that could better be used for something interesting... but if the atmosphere is what's important, then the atmosphere is successful. Some of the longer songs, though suffering from moments of seemingly directionless playing of floating and dissonant riffs, induce the classic hypnotic effect that black metal capitalized on over a decade ago. These can be good and provide some evil sense of destructive subconscious forces, but more often than not they would be better off being cut in half.

The speed doesn't really return for a while after the second track. There is much of the slowness, the atmosphere, and some midtempo attack. Not until the final track does the speed really return, but it quickly shifts back into the atmospheric tamperings, though this time I feel they're done most effectively.

Overall, it's about a standard black metal album. It convincingly sounds as if it's from the 90's, and could easily pass for being Norwegian (Sweden's practically the same thing as Norway). I'm not as impressed by this as I was by their first album or their demo, but since I haven't listened to those in a while it's hard for me to say whether that's because it is not as good, or simply because I've been exposed to a lot more in the days since I last listened to those. If the relentless hyperviolent attack of the first track had been kept up for the following tracks this could have been a monster of an album. As it turns out, it's only a mild stalker. Not quite worth a 14 year wait, but it does, hopefully, signify the return to action of this band that can perhaps release some great stuff down the road.

1. On the Descent to Hell
2. Death's Crown
3. A Contract Written in Ashes
4. Dead Seed
5. Fleshless
6. Death Throes
7. The Wrath From Beneath
8. Alongside Death

7.0/10