I’m going to preface this by noting that I am by no means a metalhead or even seasoned in metal. I am somewhat of a newbie and my review will reflect that. With that said I know what I was looking for in this album, so my review will reflect how well it scratched that itch, and if it did not, what else it did right.
So what was this itch? What was I looking for so badly in an umbrella genre I generally don’t listen to as often? I had listened to the thrash metal albums by the band King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard. Both albums in the genre they released at the time of this review highly impressed me and made me more interested in metal as a whole, but particularly thrash metal. So I asked around, what else sounds like this? What else has this stoner thrash prog metal thing going on that I love so much? One of my friends suggested High On Fire, and he was one of the biggest metal listeners I knew.
So here we are, how does the album itself fare with these complicated and specific standards? The short answer is pretty well. The opener “Devilution” starts off with this super quiet drum rhythm that slowly builds. Once it gets loud the album does a good job of carrying the momentum that it sets. It definitely leans closer to Rats’ Nest than Dragonic if we are comparing to Gizzard. By this I mean it is far more simple stoner metal and has less progressive metal elements. However, like Rats’ Nest, which I am sure this album had an influence on, it is endearing and even fun in its simplicity.
Just because it is simple doesn’t mean it is not dynamic whatsoever however. It is not just turn off your brain thrash, there are some interesting sections. Like the solo in “Face of Oblivion” leads into a part with acoustic, almost medievil strings, and some electric chords that progresses into an incredible instrumental passage with some awesome chord progressions and drum rhythms that come together quite handily. What I described is complicated but High On Fire bring it together with the seamless simplicity than I enjoyed in Rats’ Nest.
One more Key sonic similarity between Blessed Black Wings and Rats’ nest that definitely complicated is the psychedelic haziness of much of it all. This was something that I was mixed on initially considering I’m usually into cleaner production, but at the end of the day, it isn’t that much hazier than Rats’ Nest, and even if it were, the riffs and vocals are just so satisfying that I could forgive it.
So did this album scratch my King Gizzard thrash itch? Somewhat yes. Did I enjoy it as a whole? Very much. It is a bit more sludgy and generally rough than Rats’ Nest, but it works in its own way. If the thrash Gizzard albums feel like a hellish apocalypse, this feels like a medieval one. This feels more like a hazy old time graveyard than Hell itself, but I still enjoy it for that.
8/10
