Colds winds rage across seas. That’s what they tell us. The sea seems to be at the heart of this debut album from Brazilian progressive black metal band Thermohaline.
Creaking timbers on the waves set the scene, but turn into majestic tones. Before long the titular maelstrom is upon as all hell breaks loose and dirty black vocals breathe their fire over us. This impressive and humongous powerful piece is “Obra Dinn”. As if to doff their cap to the progressive side of life, there’s a ringing passage with post-metal elements and a haunting vocal floating in the background, before the storm of the black metal returns and this multi-faceted track creaks to an end. Thermohaline know how to manipulate sound. The raging black metal progressions are jagged in sound as if the storm is cutting in and causing power dips. “Adamastor” shudders forward blackly and turbulently. Well, I should expect maelstroms to be turbulent, shouldn’t I? We plunge into an abyss where there are echoing vibrations and scarily spoken words. There’s great imagination. An accordion appears from somewhere but only for a few seconds or two as the storm resumes loudly and unabated. It’s violent and it’s chaos out there. A clean chorus rings through but it’s anything but clean in all this frantic mess of flying parts and total chaos. And somehow “Adamastor” ends electronically, darkly of course, but the lack of boundaries is rife. And this album is so much the better for it. We get a sort of breather with “Sirens”. Well, it’s slower for a couple of minutes as we’re treated to echoes of spoken terror. The soundscape expands and envelops us in fury. The fog comes in again and it’s like a nightmare. This has the evil atmosphere of Dødheimsgard, with whom Thermohaline draw comparison. It’s beyond post- industrial. It’s unusual and grotesque, marked always by the deliberate distortion of sound. They could have left us hanging, but the storm returns and we are swept along in the evil wind. “Sirens” could be the soundtrack of the horror film of your choice.
“Shipwrecked” sounds like the theme for nautical disaster. Musically it starts as black n roll. Deep sounds and violent vocals reinforce the extremity. The aliens have landed on our nautical scene. In fact, the band refer aptly to their brand of black metal as “nautical dementia”. It’s a stormy ride. And then we get a delightful little guitar passage as presumably the storm subsides. The distant chorus strikes out soulfully, as we rise majestically to the heights. I thought Persefone put everything into their music but Thermohaline put in everything plus. The sirens sound as catastrophe looms and the adventure halts temporarily. There’s no time to take breath though. The sirens scream as the blackened death of “Dark Corners of the Ocean” transforms into black metal of the evillest kind. The sound shapes are post-industrial, but specifically Blut aus Nord. Here the atmosphere is violent and terrifying. As the instrumentalists go at it hammer and tongs, the vocals sound like they passing through an evil wind. This is where Thermohaline do not work in straight lines. The next ghoulish passage is like being in a video game room but it’s not out of context as it all points to evil, and in any case the direct attack resumes. It is relentless attack from a world which bleeds suffering and malevolence. You want heavy extremity of a creative kind? You’ve got it here. It all points to death and destruction. It’s unimaginable that black metal could be taken in such an expansive direction. It’s like Thermohaline have taken a corpse and have ripped it apart for our pleasure. “Paardenmarkt”, which closes the album has a suitable air of melancholy and finality about it, but I’d come to realise that with this band it’s never over. Destructive noises of wind and obscure sounds hinting at hard labour and human suffering invade our mind and take us towards the final stages of this explosive and wondrously ghastly adventure.
My goodness. What a whirlwind this is. There are so many elements, so many twists and turns, so many evil atmospheres to be impressed with here. I can’t remember the last time I listened to anything so intense. The quality of sound and exploitation of it are outstanding. These purveyors of nautical dementia have created a real delight. “Maelström” is a work of extreme values and exciting imagination.
(9.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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