Atmosphere and Black Metal go together like garlic and bread, we all know this. Why do I state this obviously fundamental thing? In the traditional sense, atmosphere and atmospherics are typically used in Black Metal recordings to establish a sense of world-building. Atmosphere is classically employed as a side dish to any main course serving of Blackened songwriting, and to provide the listener with a sense of breathing room between the naturally intense nature of the style as a genre. In so many instances, a creative use of atmosphere can breathe so much life, substance and vitality into a project. Hailing from Rome, Bianca is a new project that was formed in 2024. This self-titled debut features moments of ambient atmospherics that are clearly intended to bear just as much importance as its louder and more intensely chilling moments.
Featuring members whose other musical credentials include Hideous Divinity and Patristic (the latter released an incredible album earlier this year and my review of it can also be read on VM-Underground). This is an album stemming from musicians who are clearly stretching their continuous stratospheric ambitions in multiple ways. At its core, Bianca is an album centred around the performances of the group’s vocalist, who goes by the moniker ‘β’. Her mesmerising vocal output is clearly deserving of centre stage as the album takes you through its phases. The concept of Bianca as an album allegedly revolves around a female identity and serves as an eight-step (eight tracks) journey into the human mind and how in the band’s own words: “the unconscious can be used as a messenger of precious insights for interpreting reality”.
The album’s opening track ‘The Dawn’ emerges with whispers and guitar reverberations with a flange effect that creates an audible sensation reminiscent of gently lapping water. I envisage that this is intended as an introductory soundscape of the quietly subconscious mind. The voice of β rises towards the end of the track in a sort of disconcerting yelp as if to have been awoken by a night terror. The second track ‘Abysmal’ lures the listener in with unsettling ambience before the dichotomy of loud guitars and Sathrath’s drums enters the picture. β’s voice opens in a sort of choral sense before her oration transitions into a deathly chilling scream. The pitch of her distorted vocals gives hints of the upper register wretch of Dani Filth but β’s tambre has a unique power and unnerving aggression. The ritualistic-sounding, heavy and hasty Black Metal instrumentation of the song is equally as powerful.
The track ‘Nachtexe’ spares little ambience before the pummeling, dissonant, avant-garde and technical instrumentation assaults you whilst the harsh vocals bellow out in an unrelenting and possessed state of psychopathy. The segments of the song where β’s cleaner, neoclassical vocals shimmer and soar above the instrumentation make for some particularly haunting moments between the more overtly harrowing parts. The segue track ‘After Dark’ serves to reinforce the mystical ambience of the world that Bianca inhabits. The record is front-loaded with enough good and even great ideas to establish its identity. It is a little unfortunate then, that the three songs in the latter portion of the album, whilst performed well on all fronts, do seem to rinse and repeat the ideas from earlier. These three songs do little to expand upon the sound or pacing of the album and expose the record as having a somewhat limited range of ideas. These last tracks aren’t inherently bad, but by this point, it feels as if the band doesn’t have much left to say.
I think this self-titled album represents a potential diamond in the rough for these clearly talented musicians. I find that the delivery of β’s vocals, particularly her cleaner singing, also takes a repetitive turn towards the back end of the album. That said, her contributions on the album when taken as a whole are still impressive. If the band can expand on the stronger moments of this album and create something more expansive and more fully realised in the future then I see no reason why Bianca cannot craft something truly spellbinding in the coming years.
