Mostly down to their lovely name, I have been aware of Toadeater for a while now but this was the first chance I’ve had to get to grips with them on an album.
With a squeal of braking guitar and then an absolute storm of black metal (or post, depending on your point of view) ‘Asche’ hurtles at you. Immediately I am struck by the intensity of vocals and sound, and the darkly melodic assault. I guess I should err towards the post-black metal sound (which generally I avoid like the plague) but there is a curious and compelling sound like Ameseours if they’d been bitten by a rabid dog. There are quieter interludes of melody refrains but nothing ever strips away the bite here either. And it is a compelling song too; a whisper of goth in its tune, an almost dungeon synth tone.
‘Let The Darkness Swallow You’ a similar pattern but a different tune. Plaintive clean singing of the title brings utter despair in a simple twist. It’s a strange and oddly unnerving song, like watching someone being swept away in a flood. ‘Lowest Servant’ is a denser and more gnarly affair despite the doom choir, a heavy step to its sound and a snarl that seems to stare you down. Closer ‘Molten Gold’ is the song that makes me realise that for all the tumultuous black metal riffing there is a curious doom dna tangled up somewhere in this, a torment and a depression that seems to match the engravings they so often use album art, a sense of the classical amidst the rising melodic moments and ominous choral vocals and a sense of everything that has gone before suddenly reaching the point of no return in a maelstrom of sound.
Four songs in just under forty-five minutes and really every moment enthralling as they spiral down and down into some unknown darkness. Three albums in since their 2018 inception is a serious work ethic too, and with no hint of any former bands, that they have reached this stage so quickly is worthy of note.
It’s strange but even though its musical inspiration from the sound lies almost entirely within black metal they really seem to fit into an odd collection in my brain of outliers with no real musical threads between them but who I connect somehow; like the aforementioned Ameseours, early Beyond Dawn, Jack Frost, Hangman’s Chair and Bethlehem. Curious acts who knew instinctively what they were reaching towards.
I am really going to have to invest in their previous works as this is dark, tormented excellence.
(8/10 Gizmo)
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