A chilly zephyr transforms into a forceful landscape-altering storm of ice, as the vibrational winds of this new Radbraker full-length begin to howl throughout the rural expanses of Belgium. The band features members who are also contingent musicians for other blackened outfits within the modern Belgian underground, including the likes of Nil Miserans, Aerdryk and Dudsekop. This album, entitled ‘Where The Mist Falls’ revolves around a concept that, in the band’s words “contains five stages of dealing with life in oppression”. Radbraker also claim that their musical output is intended to ‘bring life from the countryside’, which I find to be a fairly fitting metaphor when considering the sound of the band on this release.
These five tracks bring with them an expansive feeling of space, the instrumentation frequently being drenched with a generous amount of reverb that generates a tonality as if the band are performing somewhere within an open field. The ambitious longer-form compositional approach of these tracks, combined with the band’s beautiful nature-musing sound, feels reminiscent of various Paysage d’hiver material. The expansive soundstage aids the band in sounding like a slightly distant and obscured entity within the mix and this helps to maintain an air of mystery to their enchanting performances. ‘Edele gramschap’ begins with some acoustic guitar strumming with a thick layer of electric guitar amplifier feedback filling out the remaining space like a lingering sheet of mist. After this introduction, the band plays within a sort of tension-inducing whirlwind as the deeply visceral progression of the song takes you through its grey and mournful journey.
The dense battering guitar distortion and glum chord progression on ‘Katharsis’ feels akin to trudging your mud-clad shivering body through a gloomy landscape during a bout of heavy rain. The final couple of minutes of this track are particularly intense and I love how the vocal performance here contains the sort of sharp furious desperation that I associate with the last couple of Kaevum records. This foul weather atmospheric tumult is elevated to an even more destructive place on ‘Danst, bok dans’, where despondent lead guitars leap out from a tornado pillar of ripping instrumentation. Again, the intensity of the vocals here is brilliant, and the overall chaos of this song blends rather perfectly with the reverb-heavy atmosphere. The final song, ‘Duiszend haerden’ opens to a progression of relatively calmer instrumentation that evolves into a mid-paced doomy movement, which then also gives way to another battering of despondent faster intensity. The song features a more directly rhythmic centre than the other tracks and I love how it flows throughout its various phases towards the final swirling cacophony.
‘When The Mist Falls’ is an easy album to like; the band performs quality Atmospheric Black Metal that remains engaging thanks to its solid writing and a well executed wide-scale sense of spaciousness. Radbraker seems to be capable of painting a vivid audible picture with their use of dynamics and a knack for gloomy scene-setting, something that the band have a natural aptitude for. I look forward to revisiting this one throughout the coming months and I would highly recommend this to fans of Paysage d’Hiver, Muvitium and Drudkh.
