It's rare that you stumble across a record that is just hands down the black metal album of the year. Yet as I sat listening to Thrawsunblat's Metachthonia I quickly realize that that is exactly what Metachthonia is. Metachthonia with all of its folky tendencies and sprawling soundscapes, backed by burning northern skylines, serves as a reminder as to all that the band has stood for over the years. And yet as they push forward you quickly realize that though the band may have come from the ashes of Woods of Ypres they have reached a point with only their second full length where they can give their ancestor a run for its money. That is not to say that Thrawsunblat is aping the parent band, but rather that these guys are simply that fucking good. This is the sound of the future and watching this band leap from peak to peak, stunning the listener with the sheer sonic majesty of what is being done here will never get old. In a genre that often gets its head lost up its own ass, Metachthonia is proving that you can still build amazing and fresh sounding music while staying largely within the paradigm.
That is not to say that Metachthonia doesn't do some exciting things. The clean vocals found throughout the album are utterly stunning. On a similar note, Rae Amitay's vocal contributions add a whole new element to the sound, bringing a touch of her other band, Immortal Bird, into the fold. All of the folks in Thrawsunblat are simply insanely talented. There is not much more to it than that this group of musicians have fully digested all that black metal can be and it is a beautiful thing to watch. Thrawsunblat have come from the ashes of tragedy to create something so perfect and monumental in scale that you have to wonder why these people haven't taken their rightful place as the new metal masters. There is almost no other band in the world as exciting to me right now as Thrawsunblat, so when Odin, when will there time come?
After I wrap up this review I'm going to have to move on to writing about a different record and that will necessitate changing music, but I'm actually typing slower right now because I simply don't want to put this record down. Metachthonia has rapidly proven to me that it could have a place in my heart next to At The Heart Of Winter, In The Nightside Eclipse, or perhaps most fittingly, The Pursuit Of The Sun And The Allure Of The Earth, an album my iTunes tells me I listened to over a hundred times in my senior year of high school. I started spinning Metachthonia on Saturday; I write this on a Monday whilst logging my seventh listen. I hope that communicates to you how goddamn good this album is. Addictive, potent and endlessly engaging, Metachthonia is an absolute motherfucker of a record and a reminder that the best black metal is still to come.
Score: 10/10
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