I did not discover Poland’s Furia until 2015 when i got around to hearing Nocel after seeing it littered on a a few 2014 year end lists. So I really can’t talk about the bands past releases and development etc, past that album and this new one, an album that appears to be even more creative and experimental than Nocel, but still equally as challenging and brilliant.

While loosely under the black metal banner with a melancholic aura, Księżyc milczy luty (Moon Silent Severe), to me seems to be taking a little bit of influence from Tribulation’s last 2 releases, in that there is a patient, sultry evocative sway to the new material, matching the lunar themes. Then throw in a real off kilter, unhinged, almost bluesy vibe similar to Fleurety’s Mid Tid Skal Komme, and you get envelop pusher.  Don’t get me wrong, the crisp guitar tone and occasional expulsions of melodic blackened rage are still here, but on the whole the album is very restrained and controlled with a hazy, hypnotic, psychedelic, almost Moriconne-ish, hue.

The first two songs “Za ćmą, w dym” and “Cialo” alone really highlight the album’s more seductive, yet unhinged sound with purposeful, controlled swaying riffs and more spoken words, gruff shouts and chants than regular black metal vocals. It’s not until the third song “Tam jest tu” where we get anything that remotely resembles ‘true’ black metal, but lord is it a mesmerizing sound that lulls you into a haze, than shakes you awake with sudden bursts of more standard black metal.

As I said, “Tam jest tu” delivers the first riff that imbues real black metal\, but even that takes a while to appear after a few minutes of languid twang and tumble (remember how Fleurety’s “Fragmenter av en fortid” started?), but around 5:40 in, you get some swirling, atonal, shifty riffage. It’s short lived but worth it. “Grzej” picks up the mood with a militant march and shout, and along with the similarly structured, but more menacing “Zabieraj łapska”, are the album’s most direct, traditionally black metal aggressive tracks.

The the album closes with “Zwykłe czary wieją”, and folks we have one of my favorite track of the year. A sauntering, swaying bluesy 6 minute lope that climaxes with one of the year’s, catchiest, sexiest, rocking-est riffs that had me hit repeat over and over again, a rarity for me in this promo filled, listen to me know for review day and age. And like fellow Poles Mgla, they know they have a good one and run with it and make it stick till the song’s very end, making an already awesome album even better and showing a more avant garde  Furia as a truly underrated entity in the international black metal scene.

[Visit the band's website]

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