Graveland - In The Glare of Burning Churches
Review: Underneath the carefully-styled melodic aspirations and chantlike cadences of this music unfurls the hybrid of epic metal and aggressive atonal hardcore that forms the internal pressure in the gently unfolding sound of Graveland. Their unification of simple black metal themes with classical structural principles have enabled this band to hold ground with their long and wandering compositions, dreamlike in their simple melody and poetic recombination.
Raw blasts of sound and stamping rows of chords connect a sequence of moments where the tremelo melody of fast-strummed chords distorted to rampant liquid sound hits its accentuations and leaves floating melody over a sometimes-confused but rhythmically dead-on angry base, giving a haunting nature of uncertainty to the beauty of soaring melodies in power chords harmonized with an open-throated growl of primal pleasure. Hedonistic and retributive, these songs encompass both the free spirit and destructive anger of the feral human soul.