More than ten years on from their inception, Norwegian band Profane Burial come back with their second album. “My Plateau” is described as intense and extreme with a leaning to black metal. Featuring symphonic elements, this band’s brand of metal is regarded as cinematic and atmospheric.
Cascading technical metal greets us, turning into rapid-fire orchestral black metal. The vocalist has the right rasping tone, promoting evil as the world flutters chaotically and turbulently around him. If you’d told me this was by Carach Angren, I would have believed you. Midway through the stormy ride the opening title track, it tones down but the atmosphere is no less sinister. The symphonic feel provides the pomp. The band add the fury and the malevolence. The next tale begins. That’s how it seems as the vocalist hisses out the words. “Moribund” is like a deathly nightmare, swinging backwards and forwards, oscillating between instrumental violence and the sinister horror movie atmosphere created by the withering piano and sweeping orchestral sounds.
The menacing drum and a prolonged howl welcome us to “Fragments of Dirge”, the next nightmare. The instrumentalists preach disaster in their black metal way. Fragments of Dirge” smells tragedy. The vocalist utters his words carefully and threateningly. A maelstrom of orchestral metal, aided by a lone pianist, signals “Righteous Indoctrination”. “Despair ….” growls the vocalist before the pianist plays and the clouds thicken once more. Drums trigger and the mood is dramatic. Heresy, desecration … it’s all in here. “Disambiguate Eradication” is as dark as it sounds, featuring the usual black metal rampage and the dramatic tones of the orchestra. The sound of a creaking door is almost a cliché in this kind of album. It features at the start of “Horror Code”, which sets out on a black march before the winds whip up briefly. The black march resumes, exploding here and there and whipping itself up into a frenzy and something dramatic is suggested. The vocalist continues his evil and menacing utterances as the symphony and instrumentalists combine one final time to fill the air with fury and darkness.
This was an album I found myself settling into. Once I’d got the idea it was going to be bombastic black metal with the spirit of evil all around, I found a comfort zone and never really shook myself out of it. I mentioned above that Profane Burial remind me of Carach Angren. They do, but whilst there is plenty of exaggerated drama and terror here, “My Plateau” doesn’t have the twists and comical hype that the Dutch band create. Nevertheless, it’s a vivid and atmospheric album which I enjoyed listening to.
(7/10 Andrew Doherty)
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