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BLACK HOWLING
Return Of Primordial Stillness

Signal Rex (2018)
Rating: 7/10

You should know the story by now, Black Howling being a rather experienced and well-established black metal duo from Lisbon who brings their suffocating style of metal into their sixth full-length release.

Very much focusing on pessimism, hate, and depression, Return Of Primordial Stillness makes for rather uncomfortable listening with its black oil-slick trudges and gloomy, despondent wails of disagreeable emotions. That’s not to say this is strictly suicidal black metal, but the horrors conjured up on opening track ‘Iberia’ are so hideous and obscure as the twosome brings together grim doomscapes mixed with Gothic fluttering of rainy accord.

Vocally the expressions are mere fragile, rasping gurgles as if the last few ebbs of life are slipping away from their creator, but of the four tracks on offer it’s the two sandwiched between opener ‘Iberia’ and closer ‘Cosmic Oblivion’ which provide the meat. Both ‘Celestial Syntropy (Übermensch Elevated)’ and ‘Celestial Entropy (Emptiness Revelation)’ together will sap thirty-minutes from your life as abrasive squalls of racing, stark black metal gusts.

‘Celestial Syntropy (Übermensch Elevated)’ is a miserable, downbeat soundscape of hissing cymbals, lo-fi percussion and distant strains of bleak melody. It’s fast or morbidly slow; never weighty, but always graven. Meanwhile, ‘Celestial Entropy (Emptiness Revelation)’ begins with a nice melodic trickle and solitary drum nod and haunting guitar tone before stretching its limbs as a tinkling, grey icy haze of unadorned musicianship.

In fact, there’s nothing remarkable about this even as the vocal cries bleed into the veil of ashen discordance and discomfort. ‘Celestial Entropy (Emptiness Revelation)’ is the musical equivalent of teeming rain as that drum nods its way steadily through the soundtrack of dejection until the duo picks up the pace, again coating seemingly fragile structures with dismal wails of unhappiness.

Having said that, I’ve heard far more depressing black metal streaks than this and as I’m led into the stages of ‘Cosmic Oblivion’ I’m almost lifted by this instrumental tinkle, feeling as if I’m required to stare into space for some sort of extra-terrestrial signal to zap my senses.

Like so many bands who dabble in such sounds, Black Howling somehow soothe rather than fully depress, and so the title of this album is somewhat misleading because the pacier snaps of black metal are very much obscure, nocturnal wisps of wickedness. But all the while as this project runs one cannot help but feel, see and hear the melodious patterns which make Return Of Primordial Stillness rather mesmerising. Such emotive strains are certainly an acquitted taste however, although those on show here display fragility rather than a meaty menace.

Neil Arnold

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