Hopefully Darkestrah should need no introduction by now to anyone who has a thing for bands combining eastern vibes with black metal. Luckily, though, Darkestrah is so much more than that. For the uninitiated – and at the risk of sounding like a wild-eyed zealot – let me explain. The sky-scraping atmospheres; the wraith-like vocals; the smoke-filled keyboards combined with those intoxicating riffs. It’s all helped to provide some of the most perfect moments in epic black metal from a band that have barely put a foot wrong – unless you count the paucity of their output over the past decade. Darkestrah is all about black metal explosions. But at the same time the music can be insidious. A bit like being caught in a snowstorm – you’re minding your own business enjoying a bit of borderline ambient black metal wondering whether they’ve maybe even lost their mojo… And suddenly everything’s taken off into the stratosphere; then the storm clears and it feels like you might just be able to see everything from here to the Aral Sea in minute detail.
The band – originally from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, now based in Germany – has teased us with a patchy release schedule that has included just one full-length studio album since 2008. Manas was perhaps their most subtle and most masterly release to date. A rich tapestry that it was possible to dip into at any point and still become drawn in almost immediately from the point of contact. So it’s good to finally hear new vocalist Merkith finally getting a clear run at things and proving that, although distinct from the characterful orcish-rasps of female vocalist Kriegtalith, he’s adding some sheer power to the music. First track One With The Grey Spirit kicks off in classic Darkestrah style – utterly sublime and totally over the top at the same time. The obligatory soundtrack-intro gently beats the path for a teasing melody that in turn gives way to a huge riff. It’s an instant high – a Cult Tengri-style blast of sound that puts the band’s bollocks right on the line straight away. Because many bands would never recover from such a fine start
But recover they do, even though, as ever, it’s not in predictable ways. Because Darkestrah is not about plucking low hanging fruit but pulling you into a carefully crafted world of black metal that constantly shifts between the hypnotisingly atmospheric and stratospherically intense. As ever, there are tracks here that are slowly burning fires waiting to be discovered on repeated listens – Conversations of the Seer being a classic example. In fact Turan is a testament to Darkestrah’s ability to provide ample texture within the crescendos that ultimately will be undiscovered hooks that will eventually stick with you.
The layers of melody make pretty much all their work something you can dive into at any given point and let’s you be effortlessly carried along by the flow. Even Bird of Prey, which I would say was the track I found the most difficult to get into, easily transports you into the band’s world even though it’s not as obviously commanding as some of the surrounding tracks. Darkestrah one of those bands for me where the coming of a new album more than just a hasty note in the calendar, but more a full-on event.
A band like this is probably not for everyone. But the things I suspect some might not appreciate – the hypnotising repetition, the obligatory ‘Silk Road’ sound effects, the heavy use of drifting ethnic tones hanging from those keyboards – are all part of the package. In some respects, Darkestrah remind me of Summoning. Turan is full of those same easy melodies that tug at emotional strings in different ways – martial and pastoral; hugely uplifting and sombre. It mashes together the breezy paganisms of the eastern steppes with black metal in a magnificent salute of the band’s almost casual ability to make it all work without ever coming close to the same predictability that dogs so many others in epic or folk black metal realms. Teetering on the edge of guilty pleasure territory but, in the end, Darkestrah always treads a fine line though the accessible and the thought provoking. Turan is another excellent album from a band that I never tire of listening to time and again.
(8.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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