Abduction – Black Blood
Release Date: 21st October 2022
Label: Candlelight Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Black Metal
FFO: The Infernal Sea, Winterfylleth, Gaerea.
Review By: Andy Spoon
Beginning in 2016 as a single-person black metal project, UK’s Abduction is releasing their most ambitious album to date, a full-length commercial release, something that is somewhat new for the band, who had seldom released much material outside of limited releases and cassette tapes. Until 2022, Abduction had yet to release a full-length album for the masses to consider, hoping the Black Blood, out on October 21st, will be their most complete and expansive release yet. Overall, the album features 6 tracks, none having track times less than 5 and a half minutes. The listener is on board for a long journey of atmosphere.
Inspired by some of the oldest and most “raw” black metal, Abduction’s instrumentalist/vocalist, who goes by the moniker A|V, wanted to reflect that side of black metal which was intended to be ugly, stripped-down, and noisy, hoping to provoke the imagination. It’s something that is immediately-clear once played from the beginning, as dynamics are fairly flat across the board. There is an atmosphere that exudes the band’s intent, clearly demonstrating a level of “non-polished” execution that requires the listener to spend a little more mental effort to take in all of the instruments and tracks simultaneously. That is not necessarily a bad thing at all, as listeners of black metal are acutely-aware, as many black metal projects are more focused on atmosphere than execution and studio-quality “perfection”.
Plutonian gate, the album’s third track, comes in at a whopping 11 minutes, letting the listener know that there is quite a bit of material to process as the song goes in between quiet interludes and samples before exploding back into the tsunami of dissonant noise metal. While there may not be the most dynamic range in the mix levels, nor what seems like any compression ever used, each track seems to employ the song’s structure and flow to vary the overall tone, something that works for the album’s overall sound fairly-well. The longer tracks remind me of Gaerea and other acts which the band cites as similar-in-spirit. Bouncing back and forth between slow samples, black metal blasts, and alice-in-chains-esque vocal harmonies, Plutonian Gate feels like about 4 different tracks on its own, which is just awesome.
In creating the signature “sound”, it allows the artists, at least the way I see it, to create a larger overall “picture” of the album through a sterile media. If the guitar/drums/vocals don’t vary in their tone and settings, then the dynamics only come from the actual content itself. This is a smart choice for a black metal project, as it does several important things. First, it can allow a listener to be able to (potentially) recognize their style in a genre that seems to be one big blender of tracks and artists. Second, it can give a more artistic signature sound to an album as a whole, allowing the artist’s minutiae to create or stagnate across the overall project, for better or worse.
On another note, I also like to think that it’s somewhat dangerous, as a prospect, to record an album this way, as it lacks a chance for singles, something that most black metal acts aren’t super interested-in anyway. However, it could create a context that seems out of place on a playlist somewhere, almost sounding amateurish, or demo-like against other styles which are not built into the context of the album. In essence, there is a greater chance that people won’t “get it” if they only hear one track out of the blue from Black Blood, rather than the album as a whole, which brings us to the necessity of listening to the album as one piece, rather than 6 tracks. While they don’t necessarily flow right in and out of each other’s intro-outros (respectively), they all seem to really flow in the artist’s desired intent, which I think is nor as easy as some bands make it seem. Generally, I think that the album is well-produced (as it is done stylistically), well-executed, and generally cohesive. While there may not be as many “hooks” as I think that other artists might have attempted, there is enough general variation in flow, while maintaining a general motif that isn’t broken to allow the listener to experience the artist’s vision. While I don’t have the clearest and most profound explanation of that vision upon first listen, I think that having the ability to appreciate the dynamical structure of the album gives me a desire to want to spin the album again, digging in deeper for more “nuggets” of interpretation that most black metal fans might also enjoy. Abduction’s Black Blood is a sonically-stable black metal foray into song structure variation and artistic interpretation of sound through one man’s vision, giving the listener an ample media to experience the artist’s intent, a raw, cutting, and thoughtful black metal offering that ought to be spun from first to last riff to be enjoyed fully.
(3 / 5)
