Contrary to their name, Indonesian black metal act Pure Wrath perform atmospheric and melodic music, which sometimes even sounds gentle. On his third studio album, Ryo, the only member of the project (he hires session musicians), offers Atmospheric Black Metal of a contemporary manner, mostly created under the modern French black metal scene’s patterns.
The only exception is that Ryo almost never uses dissonant chords, meanwhile they would do no harm to make his music more original. But maybe then the essence of the project would have suffered – the atmosphere filled with piercing tremolo melodies. Right, the atmosphere here is everything: you can immediately forget the melody you heard, but its aura will captivate you for a long time.
Oldschool moves and riffs are quite recognizable on ‘Hymn to the Woeful Hearts’ (the beginning of ‘Years of Silence’ is a striking case in point), but even these fail to harden the album’s musical canvas. For sure, despite the fact that quite often we are hit by the blastbeat wall with tremolo-picked lead lines, this is really soft music. Melancholic insertions based on an acoustic guitar, violin (at the album’s very beginning), and piano, as well as singing with a clear voice (in the spirit of early Enslaved) organically fit into the metal narrative, making it even more atmospheric.
The excellence of rendition multiplied by emotionality makes this album entrancing. Undoubtedly, this cooing music will find its admirer, but it is unlikely that they will find something new in it.
