In my reviewing capacity for Ave Noctum, I’ve delved quite a bit into the lengthy and complex areas of progressive extreme metal. This time round I felt that a swift and icy kick of hate-filled, no frills black metal would be just the thing. Imagine my dismay when I noticed that this new release from Strynn clocked-in at over an hour or so. Maybe I wasn’t going to get a short dose of black metal after all.
Thankfully, about 7 of those minutes are made up of shrieking feedback at the end of the last track. However, 50-odd minutes of trem-picked fury is still a weighty proposition, but I was pleased to find that over 11 tracks, ‘Alienation’ manages to hold the attention.
This is the 2nd full-length release from the French band, and it’s clear that Strynn are keen to forego the well-furrowed occult path, and focus purely on the hatred. (Check out their website, it’s quite a hoot!)
They utilise two vocalist/guitarists, one male, one female…but at times you may be hard pressed to work out the gender of any particular shriek and rasp. What you will notice, however, is the audibility of bass. Strynn’s debut album ‘Decadence’ lacked such an instrument, but here the bass guitar is prominent and imaginatively used. It may sound a bit wobbly on opening track ‘Anthropohobia’, but with the chiming resonance of ‘Desolation’, the prog-like lines of ‘Plague’ and the fuzz sound of ‘Reminiscence’, the bass attack leads the charge on many occasions. Elsewhere the guitars are suitably cold and the alternating vocals drip with malice. Second track ‘Sadistic’ sounds like Hat-era Gorgoroth, and ‘Pryroclastic’ showcases the varied tempo drumming to great effect, as does ‘Obliteration’, as a misleading doomy crawl gives way to a more frenzied approach. ‘Perdition’ has a musty whiff of Marduk about it, and the instrumental track ‘Anamnesis’ is strangely emotive, leading us into the spindly and lengthy finale of ‘Jailed’.
Overlong? Certainly, but Strynn have produced a strong and seething record that is misanthropic and straight to the point, making ‘Alienation’ a worthy addition to your collection. As for the shrieking feedback at the end…not big…not clever.
(6.5/10 Stuart Carroll)
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