When talking about Black Metal albums, the word “atmospheric” can be rather difficult to pin down. Sometimes it means pine-scented forest sulking, other times bleak, suicidal caterwauling – these days, due to the odd and sometimes unpredictable shifting of underground trends, it’s as likely to mean “we are now a 90’s Indie band” than anything else. On Setter Of Unseen Snares (Church Of Fuck), long-running British two-piece Caina have pulled off the increasingly unusual trick of doing something a little bit different.
The first half of Setter… leads from a genuinely haunting True Detective sample into four short, dynamic tracks of Black Metal that are contemplative, aggressive and catchy. Favouring strident riffing and surprisingly melodies underpinned by solid blasting and shrieked vocals, they pull off the trick of being “atmospheric” without losing any of the power or dynamics that Black Metal is supposed to have. This is particularly evident on ‘I Am The Flail Of The Lord’ and ‘Applicant Supplicant’, which bookend this first half with genuinely catchy riffs and something approaching a sing-along chorus. Taken by themselves, these first five tracks would form a genuinely effective EP of mature, listenable Black Metal in its own right.
The album doesn’t end with those five tracks, however, and the sixth track – the fifteen-minute ‘Orphan’ – either transforms the rest of the album or contradicts it. Ditching the forceful Black Metal riffing for a slow-build swell of feedback which rises into “Post-Metal” atmospherics and clean vocals, ‘Orphan’ almost sounds like a different band at first, and initially the effect can be to break the momentum built up over the first five tracks. As the song develops, however, more traces of Caina’s Black Metal sound start to introduce themselves, until ‘Orphan’’s final few furious minutes, where we’ve returned full-circle to where ‘Applicant Supplicant’ left us. It’s not a comparison all fans will be glad of, but the band Orphan most calls to mind is controversial “hipster BM” merchants Deafheaven. After a couple of spins, it really coalesces into a single entity, with ‘Orphan’ throwing the catchiness and power of the first five tracks into sharper relief, while highlighting more vividly the atmospheric and contemplative nature of the band.
Setter Of Unseen Snares, then, is a genuinely remarkable album in its own, quiet way, but it needs a bit of time to reveal itself as such. On initial listens it may well sound competent, polished but ultimately offering little new – but for those with the patience to join up the dots between the first and second part of the album and allow the experience of one to affect the other, this may well stand as one of the most interesting and accomplished Black Metal albums they’ve heard in a while.
8.0/10
RICHIE HR