Renihilation

Brooklyn-based black metal band Liturgy don't embrace the tropes of their chosen genre. The members don't wear corpse paint; they don't even seem to wear a whole lot of black. Their album cover features a solar eclipse, but a prior EP had a photo of a bright, sunlit sky -- no black-and-white shots of wintry forests here. Indeed, song titles like "Beyond the Magic Forest" and "Behind the Void" could indicate that they're attempting to transcend black metal's self-imposed aesthetic and philosophical limitations and reveal to outsiders the glory that the music can offer. They've picked the perfect producer for the job; Colin Marston, of Behold... the Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, and Byla, understands how to record high-pitched, lightning-fast guitar picking, but discards traditional metal iconography even within his own black metal-ish project, Krallice. Liturgy's actual songs feature the usual blasting rhythms and fuzzed-out, tremolo-soaked guitars, and group founder Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's vocals are an incomprehensible roar, but there's a softness around the edges, a fuzziness that keeps the music from slashing at the ear, making it almost...well, transcendent. If it weren't for the relentless drums and the growling and screaming, these cyclical guitar riffs could easily be music for meditation. The untitled interstitial tracks, which feature drones and wordless chants, only magnify this effect. This is black metal that doesn't waste its time with pagan or satanic bluster, but goes straight for the transcendence that pure music can offer. ~ Phil Freeman