It has been a tough and thankless task over the years, being a fan of Gehenna. With constant line-up changes, drastic changes in musical style and extended periods on hiatus, they were always able to disappoint you somehow. Building a solid following on their first 3 albums with their raw brand of symphonic black metal, their switch to Moonfog heralded a step towards the more death orientated side of the black metal canon. This period lost them a lot of fans and things came to a head during the recording of ‘Murder’, an album so far removed from their early material as to be almost unrecognisable as a Gehenna album. The strain proved too much and the band imploded shortly after the album’s release. Returning after a 5 year break, ‘WW’ was a blistering return to form, and a return to raw black metal, albeit this time without the symphonic element. The damage done previously was all too telling however, and despite a favourable critical response to ‘WW’ many fans still stayed away. Further line-up changes followed, and despite signing to Indie Recordings in 2008 there was no sign of a new album surfacing despite assurances from Sanrabb. Earlier this year though, it happened. Almost out of nowhere the new album was confirmed. The only question, given the band’s rather chequered history, is what form would it take?
Make no mistake about it; ‘WW’ was a damn fine black metal album of an organically raw and brutal nature. Simply you can’t just create something like that, it just has to occur. My reckoning was that if ‘WW’ took 5 years to make, then ‘Unravel’, having taken 8 years should be even better as a result of 3 extra years of raw organic growth. It’s a simple case of maths. The reality is not so cut and dried though, and if truth be told, ‘Unravel’ is quite disappointing. Things start initially promising with ‘The Decision’, with its slow doom-like qualities. Sanrabb is in excellent vocal form with one of the more naturally evil rasps in black metal, but the minimalist, funereal pace becomes heavy going quite quickly. The title track which follows is more like what I initially expected from this album, with some intense classic black metal. Frantic tremolo riffing with a concussive supporting drumbeat initially raises the hopes, but it is soon clear that expectations are far from being met. The songs simply do not grab the attention and the formula of slow song/fast song soon becomes very tiresome. Throughout the album there is very little to separate one track from the next in terms of quality or hook, and the whole thing passes by in a rasped dirge without leaving any impression on the listener.
One of the things that made ‘WW’ so successful for me was the production, which was distinctly black metal in nature by way of it being extremely low-fi, yet the instrumentation was always very clear. On ‘Unravel’ the mix is a bit of a mess with Dolgar’s bass being overlooked in the mixing process but for a couple of instances, and the drums being buried towards the back of the mix; not that there is any aspect of the music that sounds as if it is getting preferential treatment. On the subject of the drums, Slaktaren does a workmanlike job, but it is one of the things that was most disappointing here, although getting Frost back in for session work again would have been self-defeating. ‘Unravel’ suffered from the weight of excessive expectation and my disappointment is reflected in the low score. Despite Gehenna being one of my outright favourite black metal bands, I have to conclude that this is a distinctly average album. After 8 years in the making it really should have been so much better.
(5/10 Lee Kimber)
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