Hyadningar’s The Weak Creation has been on my review list for a while now, sitting idle among a few goregrind and old-school death metal CDs like an orphaned stepchild. I’m glad I decided to play it before the first decade of the new millennium closed. Here’s one black metal album from 2009 that deserves to be heard: a potent combination of melodic guitars, sharp drumming, thoughtful lyrics and stunning visuals. If you think black metal has hit a creative low this French band (that features members of Funeralium and Bethlehem) will restore your faith in the genre.
Rather than trying to create darkness using the traditional low-fi sound and grunginess listeners know all too well Hyadningar takes a better road: write powerful material with a majestic sweep. Marquis’ (Bethlehem)vocals shift between crooning rasps and charged shouts while Eurynome and Nehluj trade riffs and solos that seem as influenced by Death and later Carcass as they do by traditional, monochromatic black metal guitars.
The production, handled by the band and Kris Baelen in Belgium, is stunning: the guitar tone, bass and drums are unbelievably crisp. One of the hallmarks of black metal is the ability to make dark material almost beautiful and the band delivers on all eight tracks. The mariachi-tinged guitars opening “Haven of Death would fit nicely in “Spanish Caravan” by The Doors. Hyadningar also has enough faith in their songs not go take everything into warp-speed; the music is allowed time to develop and breathe. There’s still velocity on songs like “The Weak Creation” for those that like everything at Marduk-level speed. The lyrics aren’t the standard God is dead variety; instead, there is almost poetic phrasing in songs like “The Beast Within”: “fragments in the colors of hatred/look at the scorn torrent/where dreams and symbolic things die.”
Along with Vreid’s Milorg, The Weak Creation is one of the best yet more overlooked black metal releases of the year. Some black metal pursits might fault the band’s expansiveness and polished production. If you aren’t among them add this to your list of 2009 albums that deserve to be heard. The Weak Creation, despite little fanfare, holds its own against strong albums from Merrimack, Deathspell Omega and Glorior Belli. As they say in Paris, c’est bon.
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Mariachi is not the same as flamenco, my friend. Otherwise, excellent review. Gonna check these fuckers out.
on Dec 15th, 2009 at 15:08Sounds interesting, I’ll give this a try. Nice you got the Vreid recommendation in there. I think “Milorg” has been overlooked too. It’s a good album.
on Dec 15th, 2009 at 19:05Excellent album, i bought it a few months back not having heard of this band before and it is excellent. kind of strange that it is on Total Rust ( I seem to only have doom/sludge albums from them).
on Dec 18th, 2009 at 00:54