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CRAFT
White Noise And Black Metal

Season Of Mist (2018)
Rating: 8/10

Great album title. Craft is back with another freight train of ferocious tumult seven years after 2011’s Void. As expected, the Swedish band comes well equipped with huge dollops of seething, searing no nonsense black metal angles that snag and tear in fully barbed fashion as slower, melancholic streaks of black ice jut menacingly from pitch crevices of evil.

Vocalist Mikael “Nox” Petterson remains unflinching in his humourless garb, those effective snarls blasting through the blizzard to produce gnarled smirks of woe and horror as behind him seemingly standard black metal rhythms of malice give way to horrid tundras of mid-tempo grisliness.

‘The Cosmic Sphere Falls’ encompasses everything Craft does so well; an initially seething, spitting speedball of frost exudes steaming streaks of menace, before churning through frozen waters by way of slower arcs of despondency and scorn. Meanwhile, ‘Darkness Falls’ approaches from the other end of the spectrum as a black thrash body hammer, cracking through the thick sheets of ice with steely drum stabs and those cutting, angular riffs before a sudden shift in pace brings jolting dynamics of Darkthrone-styled grimness. The riff remains catchy in its venture while all around it remains arctic in its formidable galloping blast, the atmosphere being one of mid-tempo drudgery – something which is actually evident on a majority of the tracks.

So then to the negative aspects of the album. For me, White Noise And Black Metal just doesn’t provide enough noise; at times, tracks seem to labour in their one-dimensional traipse. While the riffs plough through the glacial obstacles in a catchy nature, there’s just not much else going on. Then again, if you like your black metal in this style, then you’ll no doubt lap up such frosty hikes.

Although ‘Again’ provides that trudge factor, the track is very much ominous in its pulverisation. The drums remain as steady thuds of suspense with Nox’s tone running in tandem, but there’s no denying the eeriness throughout this eight-track slab.

‘Undone’ and ‘Tragedy Of Pointless Games’ just chill the bone in their unwavering intensity and snow-driven arrogance, the riffs crushing en route to their final resting place in the pitch black wilderness. ‘Crimson’ and ‘YHVH’s Shadow’ are equally stubborn, meanwhile, providing cloddish turmoil and bleak translations built upon the foundation of John Doe’s squirming leads and the black witchery riffery of Joakim Karlsson. It’s Craft in pinched and churlish form, trotting with malevolence and regressive aplomb.

It could be argued that there’s something workmanlike about the album, but I’d prefer to call it uniformly evil; almost clenched in its stylisations but certainly not stiff in its mechanics, and yet not raw for that matter. Maybe that will disappoint, but for me the obstinacy of this opus works in its favour as Craft march headlong into the wintry landscape as black knights of their realm.

Neil Arnold

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