Black Beast — Arctic Darkness

Hailing from Finland, Black Beast formed in 2002, and they have a handful of releases in its belt; an EP,  a split album with their native Bloodhammer, a full-length, and Arctic Darkness, their latest offering. 

Arctic Darkness is at the crossroad of metal subgenres. It is where old-school black metal meets its classic and archetypical counterpart, heavy metal, with touches of metallic punk, and some strong thrash roots.  Think a cleaner version of  Impaled Nazarene, merged with a heavy scent of Angel Witch, Motorhead and the kind of punk of Sodom in “Ausgebombt” or even the clandestine punk details of early Celtic Frost. All these are topped with some strangely experimental and melodic passages that nobody could expect in this context, wonderfully placed, fine-tuning the whole outcome! 

There’s some amazing and technical guitar work throughout the album and the switching from one metal subgenre to another is most rewarding. The tracks are full of classic metal themes and riffs, solid growling and abysmal vocals, blast beats and d-beat, intense compositional structure, atmosphere and collectively, a homage to the whole spectrum of metal, without boundaries and fear of sticking to any kind of purity! Black Beast are fearless in their approach, they are certain about what they are doing and that is more than evident in Arctic Darkness! 

All in all, Black Beast have masterfully combined all the classic metallic elements with the contemporary metal evolution, but without being blandly retro. So as a result Arctic Darkness is one of the most polymorphic metal releases I’ve listened to in quite some time.