It’s nothing short of painful to watch prog-loving extreme metal bands try to fit two ill-fitting pegs into yet more annoyingly ill-fitting holes. I mean, grim and frosty extreme metal and twiddly, fiddly prog – come on… Like watching Pink Floyd collaborating with Gorgoroth. Erm, actually, that one could work. But you get my drift: soulful and sensitive clashing head on with something I normally associate with sticking pigs’ heads on wooden stakes needs to be something special to cut it. Opeth sort of did it, but for me it’s all a bit of an ongoing experiment that has never quite come off. Add to that other issues like, for example, extreme metal that isn’t very extreme at all and that ‘progressive’ often seems to get confused with a kind of warbling power metal that should really be banished to the seventh plane of hell. In short, it’s an area I struggle with.
I’m guessing that you can imagine where this is going: because Ne Obliviscaris flirted with all the above and yet still comes up smelling of charred, black leather roses. Is it those dancing, hovering bass lines that cracked my battle-hardened shell? The irresistible riffs? Or just the fact that this has all been put together in an unashamed, perfect balance of two things that should not be. To be honest, the more I listened the less ‘extreme’ this actually is. I mean there is extreme and extreme. This (and it’s pretty damn fine predecessor The Portal Of I) is one of those albums that, to any fan of underground metal, actually begins to sound like a thoroughly entertaining diversion from listening to the latest EP from some unknown Italian funeral doom black metal band. The sort of thing you might be lulled into thinking that only a madman wouldn’t fall for instantly and hurry outside to play to your non-metal friends before, just in time, you remember than the whole ‘scouring pad vocals’ thing is actually designed to turn those people off.
The Portal Of I was the heavy older brother, I’d suggest, while this time the band seem to get a lot more carried away with the purely prog side of things – while never losing track of that crucial melody that many prog bands seem to feel is superfluous. And despite all that, Citadel is actually the shorter and more focused of the two releases. I think Ne Obliviscaris can loosely be called a guilty pleasure but that’s probably doing this band a disservice. The very worst I can say about this is that you might have to listen to it all the way through to get your head around it. Somewhere around the middle of the extended violin solo during track five (there are six altogether) everything began to settle softly and warmly into place. Very unexpectedly for this sort of thing, a shiver went down my spine. The more Citadel presses on, its full-pelt blasts of extreme metal (more like Gothenburg death metal than anything else) segue into long drawn-out passages of planet straddling violin solos, increasingly operatic vocals and ever more ambitious heights.
The violin playing itself is cleverly versatile – haunting and at times almost speaking from that powerful little maple wood box. Strangely, it’s probably the star of the show. That might sound like an odd thing to say but credit where credit is due. It provides the backbone of Citadel which, when combined with all the other elements, builds into something thrilling at times. If more ‘progressive extreme’ metal were this good I might even have to completely rethink my attitude. Until then, I’m happy to hold up Ne Obliviscaris as an example of a rule-breaker – how good things can be on the lighter side of life if the formula is right.
(8.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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