In recent years the little niche of raw yet atmospheric Black Metal has spawned a lot of bands, but amongst them are a lot bands that using its rawness to hide their lack of musical capacities. Which, in itself, is not a bad thing per se, as the past has taught us that great music can be made even with the most minimal resources. Yet, every now and then there are bands that bring a certain sense of magic into their music. One of these most recent bands is the US-based Velvet Sorrow.
This anonymous band is able to weave together both raw and melodic/atmospheric Black Metal together in a way that feels like it is all late 90’s again. It reminds me of dear memories of those great demo tapes from those bygone times, bands that sometimes never made it beyond just one or two demo tapes, but helped pave the way to a new musical era in the world of extreme metal.
Roughly Velvet Sorrow is combing the ingenuity of Norwegian symphonic Black Metal of the likes of Obtained Enslavement, Odium, Limbonic Art and Emperor with the thoroughly mystical feeling of early Varathron or Mortuary Drape. But unlike bands such as Vargrav or other more recent purveyors of that particular sound, Velvet Sorrow use a base or ultimately Raw Black Metal. The result is a mesmerizing blend of different elements that, all in their own respect but also in perfect synergy, feels so familiar. The overall positive impression of ‘Demo I’ is not only fed by that familiar selection of musical influences, it surely also benefits from the band’s good sense of song writing and feeling for melodicism. It is really only that last track, ‘Blaufaust’, that feels a bit off here, not really fitting in the same framework of the previous four songs.
In just under 22 minutes the band is able to impress and to captivate, even while this is just their debut demo. This is the sort of music that falls in fertile soil these days, but due to its more raw character, Velvet Sorrow is definitely offering something that can be considered quite unique.
