Hail Spirit Noir are an experimental black metal band from
Greece, born out of another experimental black metal band from Greece:
Transcending Bizarre?. This at first made me wary because Transcending Bizarre?’s
work was lackluster progressive blackened thrash that showed no recognition of
the need for tension and imbuement, rather settling for pointless proggy songs
that were well-played and sounded okay but in the end were just a set of
absorbed, regurgitated and randomly strung together segments of musical cheese.
Also, it’s never really cool to dress up like clowns in the black metal scene,
even if you’re Arcturus. As for this new project from two of their members
though, I have to say, Hail Spirit Noir surprised me. As soon as Pneuma opens
the sound is lush and rich, springing lightly from some psychedelic jam chords
to a clean black metal riff (yes, clean), breaks off smoothly into a
very technical jazz metal segway, and then clatters back into the psych jams
with lots of old school synths, and we’re only 3 minutes into this album. The extremely
catchy crooned chorus of Let Your Devil Come Inside caught me again –
black metal’s never really been sing-along music, after all.
So it became apparent that this was going to be a different
kettle of fish to Transcending Bizarre?, who I now saw as a completely
different musical entity. It was soon revealed to me that HSH’s influences are
from far and wide, one dominant force clearly being bands such as Enslaved,
Deathspell Omega, Satyricon, Opeth and Ephel Duath (late period all), but a lot
of old school progressive and psychedelic stuff such as Lizard are evidenced
more than clearly, and all the oddities spring up in between these two poles.
This will put off some diehard retards immediately, but for the rest of you,
read on. Pneuma is a damn cool way to spend forty five minutes of your
life. Many elements have been fused together artfully in a classic prog format,
layers have been carefully selected and put together so that one can see shades
of different musical genres at a single point in time of listening. The overall
tone came off as a positive one for me, despite some prominently grim lyrics on
Let Your Devil Come Inside and moments of chaotic dissonance (perfectly
executed ones at that).
While Pneuma is brilliantly played, meticulously
produced, and wonderfully experimental, what does it actually say? What is the
concentrated idea or feeling of the band? Once the band fuses a more concrete
and meaningful idea into an album they are going to create a classic, for now
it is just a hell of a lot of very interesting fun.
In summary: This is a great debut album carrying an innovative
little bag of tricks with its good musicianship. A must for any fans of
experimental metal, Hail Spirit Noir give us what is probably the best example
of actual 70s prog and black metal fusion.
Standout tracks: Mountain of Horror, Haire Pnevma
Skoteino
Score: 8.5
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