Ushering in the cooling temperatures and gloomy days of autumn in a suitably overcast fashion is the 8th album from Texas’ Krigsgrav, appropriately titled Stormcaller. Combining the ferocity of black metal with the triumphant melancholy of doom metal, the band successfully fuse all that has come before to create a solid work of modern extreme metal that is unfortunately held back by its production.
It’s not something I do very often here at Nine Circles (and certainly isn’t something I take great pleasure in anyways), so I’ll get all the negative stuff out of the way first. Stormcaller isn’t a bad record by any means, and if you like your black metal full of doom and gloom you’ll probably love it. But the production makes for a very frustrating listen to my ears. Thunderous drumming and harsh vocals that occupy more of the mid-range frequency space tend to overpower every other aspect of the sound to such a degree that it had me seeing red more than a few times on each listen. I described Stormcaller as “modern” in the intro and I think this is where the majority of that classification comes in; an attempt at a grandiose wall of sound that ends up sounding too compressed and muddled. What happened? At the very least I can say that the album sounds much better when I’m listening through speakers, so if you’re someone who doesn’t take your metal directly to the ear holes you might have a better experience than I did. With that out of the way, lets cover everything Krigsgrav do right here.
Having showcased the album themselves as having taken from every era of the band, Stormcaller might be best described as a melodic black metal album that borrows heavily from mid-tempo doom metal — itself of the more melodic death metal-adjacent variety — in both its crushing riffs and melancholic twin-guitar leads (“None Shall Remember Your Name”). There’s also a healthy degree of blackgaze reverb to accompany the grand chords in some of the bigger moments. Even if I weren’t a sucker for melodicism in black metal, with Stormcaller I find myself latching onto the leads even more than normal simply because this is what cuts best through the wall of sound that is the drums and vocals (see the intro to “Tonic of Wilderness”). This is not to say Krigsgrav are incapable of some high highs… “Bay of the Barghest” is a clear standout with the incredible shredding that ascends shimmering to the heavens like a reversing waterfall, only to be followed by a cozy acoustic interlude and some truly phenomenal melodies in the finale.
Production issues aside, it’s clear that Krigsgrav were itching to create grand, epic music with Stormcaller, and for the most part they succeeded. There is a weight to these riffs and a sparkle in these leads (and the songwriting they carry) that brings to mind some of the greats of black metal in the 21st century — Agalloch, Panopticon, Falls of Rauros — and Krigsgrav are well on their way to accompany them.
— Colin
Stormcaller will be available September 19 through Willowtip Records. For more information on Krigsgrav, check out their Facebook and Instagram pages.