As long-time readers will know, Ave Noctum likes not just to provide state-of-the-art reviews of all things short, nasty and brutish (and that is just the reviewers), but also to ensure that our mission of education is met. Therefore, for the non-Czech speaking readers out there, “Panychida” refers to a memorial service, which is common in the Orthodox churches. Ave Noctum, see – not just here for the review scores, but also expanding minds at the same time.
All of which brings us to the latest album from Pagan Black Metallers, Panychida, from the Czech Republic. This album is, apparently, an aural journey through the Šumava mountains in Bohemia, which – and I don’t know about you – are probably my favourite mountains in Bohemia. I have no real idea if the music within really does represent mediaeval life in the aforementioned rocky hilltops, but I can say that this sounds like a pretty enjoyable romp through blackened heavy metal.
“Gabreta Aeterna” is undoubtedly built on a bedrock of black metal, but it’s not of the lo-fi recorded-in-your-shed variety, but moreover of the kind which has rather more of a background in actual heavy and thrash metal throughout, with some dashes of folky melody. Take for example “Nikoho Pan, nikoho suha”. It has the rasping vocals, the treble heavy guitars and some pretty rapid drumming, but it also has some rather tasty folk-inflected six string work going on as well. In many respects, I was actually reminded of another Czech band – Cales – not so much in the execution, but the atmosphere and the melodic work. Elsewhere, for instance on “Cernou Moci Miha Se Cerny Stin” , we essentially get Naglfar meets Thin Lizzy circa “Emerald”, with the rapid tremolo guitar playing meeting those Celtic sounding notes. It shouldn’t work. Yet somehow, it does.
To say that Panychida are a black metal band, there’s also just a really clear heavy metal feel to the whole album too. This is an album that really has some absolutely storming moments. Take, for instance, the track “Abele”. It starts with a heads-down gallop, has a very NwoBHM style “YaaaAAAHHH!” high pitched vocal opening yelp, then comes on strong with an almost Maiden for the corpse-paint generation weaving melody. It’s pretty triumphant stuff, and just manages to escape being too cheesy for consumption, though that is pretty much a close thing! Album highlight for me though is the late-era Bathory bombast of penultimate track “Todesmarch”, which manages to reinvent the sound as ciphered through the mid-tempo stomp of mid-period Immortal style dissonance.
What then, to make of the album? Is it a mish mash of ideas, or more than the sum of its parts? For me, it’s very much the latter. I doubt very much that black metal purists are going to love this, but then, for the rest of us, this is an intriguing and infectious slice of influences perfectly cooked together to make a tasty metal pie.
Now, when is someone going to present an aural journey into the Lincolnshire Fens?
(8/10 Chris Davison)
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