What is it that makes an album “heavy”? An infinite number of metalheads with an infinite number of typewriters could return an infinite number of different answers to that question. Is it in the crunchiness of the riff? Is it tuning to drop Q flat? Is it how loud the music is played, or the vocals, or the blast beats, or the darkness of the lyrics? Can an album be heavy without any of that? If you know Bosse-de-Nage, you know that they absolutely can pull off heavy without any of the frills or trappings, and on Hidden Fires Burn Hottest, they show why they continue to defy easy categorization.

The seeds of Hidden Fires were first planted way back in 2018, and it’s taken quite a bit of time, love, and care for them to blossom into this album — but that time and dedication is both the reason why Hidden Fires does, in fact, burn pretty damn hot, and also a way for the four-piece to challenge themselves and their songwriting abilities. When not crunched up against a deadline and working to perfect an album at the last minute, the band relied a lot more on repetition, refinement, and long breathers to let the songs grow and develop naturally. Lyrics were written as a pool of ideas in advance, allowing them to be pieced and re-pieced together to fit the songs once the music was in place, embracing strangeness and newness, and working within fewer of the arbitrary rules that surround genre and music in general.

In keeping with these ideas, the central theme of Hidden Fires‘ lyrics is the concept of emotions as tangible, corporeal entities we can see, feel, and manipulate — actual, physical things that exist in the space between spaces. It’s abstract and maybe a little pretentious, sure — but I’d expect and hope for nothing less from Bosse-de-Nage, and the time and thought put into this album is immediately apparent from the very first notes, accentuated by the immaculate production from the legend Jack Shirley and the mastering from Agriculture’s own Richard Clowenhill.

Hidden Fires continues to expand Bosse-de-Nage’s brand of reliably unpredictable post-black metal in a way uniquely their own. Too often, “post-black metal” bands simply shoehorn the post-metal into the black metal: “here’s some blast beats, here’s a slow part, now a fast part” — rinse and repeat, and nothing more. Hidden Fires feels like a post-black metal album in the truest sense: something that transcends the genre and exists beyond the limitations of form. Hidden Fires is absolutely a heavy album, but it achieves this in a way that eschews the traditional notion of what “heavy” means in extreme music. There are no chugging riffs, the tuning and guitar sound is bright and crisp, there’s a heavy emphasis on somber and delicate melody, there’s tons of variety in the tones, volume, and feel in every instrument, and there’s plenty of open space and room for breathing.

And yet, this is a heavy album, without a doubt, because the vibe created when all the right pieces come together in all the right ways makes this album so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a stroke of genius, and totally unlike anything else. There are moments on this album — such as basically all of “No Such Place” — that literally take my breath away. Hidden Fires is full of surprises at every turn, because of how creatively Bosse-de-Nage elevate the trappings of black metal and make it their own.

Hidden Fires Burn Hottest marks over fifteen years of Bosse-de-Nage working with everyone’s favorite dark-music label, The Flenser. It’s a relationship almost as long as The Flenser has been around, and it seems like the perfect home for the San Francisco quartet, allowing them to do exactly what they want at a pace they can be comfortable with. When you allow a group as talented as Bosse-de-Nage that kind of freedom, it’s no wonder you get albums as incredible as Hidden Fires Burn Hottest.

-Ian

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Hidden Fires Burn Hottest is available March 6 on The Flenser.  For more information on Bosse-de-Nage, visit their Facebook page.