The French Black Metal band’s 16th album, Ethereal Horizons (Debemur Morti Productions), shows that Blut Aus Nord never makes the same album twice. They embrace every side of the genre here while cloaking them all in their signature atmosphere. This is the sound of a smoke machine enveloping a band rather than just seeing it on stage. The opening track finds atmospheric black metal being pushed in new directions,, This is balanced out by the pained moaning of the clean vocals cuts through the thickness of sound, bringing Mercyful Fate‘s earliest incarnations of black metal to mind. They worked in the obligatory storm of blast beats and tremolo-picked guitars needed to identify their blackened intent, but without dialing in the cliche black metal tropes. 

“Seculsion” finds them wandering more into the murkiness of night, and is scaled out into a bigger, more epic climax. They take what many bands would have left as just a hypnotic drone and carry it to greater heights. Cleaner vocals continue to hold purpose n the punchier, more metallic attack of “The Ordeal.” The hooky riff-oriented writing exceeds expectations. “The Fall Opens the Sky” begins by adhering more closely to the tropes of second-wave black metal before transitioning into a minimalist ambiance that swells into shoegazing shimmer. 

“What Burns Now Listens” is a more hypnotic drone with vocals buried in the atmosphere, sweeping over you, thanks to the melodic chiming of guitars. There is an almost Nordic feel that reminds me more of older Enslaved on the last song. Though that is just the first four and a half minutes of what sprawls out into a 12 Minute epic. When it kicks back in after a minute of simmering, things are more grandiose and deliberate. It does wind its way into more metallic riffing that rings out and stomps in equal measure. There is a more progressive feel to the throbbing layers it reaches.

For some bands, this album would be ambitious. For this band, it is business as usual, while finding a depth of inspiration in the void of chaos from which these songs spew forth. There is an esoteric darkness that is felt rather than explained with the blood of goats or nuns being sodomized; instead, it’s the creeping unknown that fuels the Lovecraftian mythology, translated to tangible wavelengths that do not allow the ritual to overtake the riffs. It touches on almost every aspect a black metal fan might want from the genre as a whole without sacrificing their identity. 

Buy the album here:
https://blutausnord.bandcamp.com/album/ethereal-horizons

9 / 10
WIL CIFER
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