KRIEG - Transient
October 3, 2014, 9 years ago
(Candlelight)
There are few bands in the American black metal scene with more gravitas, authority and sincerity than Krieg. Led by black metal lifer Neill Jameson, Krieg embodies black metal to its frozen, trapped-under-ice core and with that eternal pagan winter comes an impressive ability to integrate both black metal's second wave roots as well as its latter permutations. Only those who genuinely understand, and painfully breath, black metal are able to create the type of holistic interpretation of the genre Krieg has done here on latest record Transient, the group executing what is by far its most ambitious, yet forlorn, LP. Recorded "with machines and magnets” (that means tape, folks), Transient is a broken, jagged monument, this impressively written album presenting the listener with the type of angularity and claustrophobia that always threatens to veer off into genuine disarray (the precipice is a looming danger that never disappears). Digging its nails even deeper in the dirt by using crust and post-punk to maximum effect, Transient understands that black metal is, and always has been, a conveyance and not a uniform. Krieg's back catalogue is entombed by abysses and embalmed in caverns and for that very reason, it is revered in black metal circles. With Transient, Krieg has added another cut to the innumerable wounds. Krieg ist black metal.
