Infera Bruo emerged with a splash a decade ago with their self-titled demo and have been churning out the sort of music that, if all was fair, might have garnered the band a steadying rise in attention. Once again they emerge with another windswept disc hurled from the swirling mist of the Eastern United States seaboard and another invigorating delivery of progressive black metal with an undeniably crusty edge. Rites of the Nameless once more channels various nuanced shades of black and grey emotion, threads of storytelling and ritualism with Infera Bruo wearing their progressive black metal tendencies firmly on their collective sleeve.
The band has been notable for its fierce almost angst-ridden style but one which incorporates progressive tendencies buried in the sonic landscape making each album an invigorating and interesting listen. Rites of the Nameless reasserts the band’s ferocious edge more than ever threading the more post-black metal inclinations into the music in ever more subtle ways. It means that while the first track plunges us into an icy, and very Norwegian-inspired, black metal world, second track Latent Foe Arcane showers us with a bitter sweet melody, claustrophobic, blackened arrangements and the introduction of a clean vocal that could so easily have been bouncing around the fjords 3,000 miles away.
Speaking of Nordic influences, the clear, precision percussion that may be familiar to anyone whose picked up the past five or six Enslaved albums is also ever present on this and does rather leave the impression that Infera Bruo are struggling to separate their sound from that of their influences. In fact, Rites of the Nameless feels a little swamped by them at times despite the fact that this is without doubt the band’s slickest and defiant work to date. The band’s final charge into the near-9-minute title track gets the album over the line but still left me unsure whether the Rites of the Nameless has raised the band from the masses or embedded it further in despite the more than apparent talent on display here.
The explosions of power and electrifying lead guitar discharges alone provide some robust hooks and the more rhythmic, melodic moments are there to be savoured at your leisure if you find the time to commit more effort to delving in. Perhaps my final thought on Rites of the Nameless is that it could have done with more of the latter to accentuate the more powerful blasts even further and provide a bit more of an exploratory experience. But that clearly is not what the band was about this time round – its shortest album to date and one that appears specifically designed to deliver a shorter, sharp shock and one that still feels fairly packed with ideas and ambition even if it falls short on the sort of originality that a band like this inherently promises.
(7.5/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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