Kevel — Mutatis Mutandis
Much like the listed influences above, vocals are sparse, the songs are lengthy (six & eleven min), and the riffs often repeat in droning, minimalist fashion. A thick wall of textured choral guitar is omnipresent, and the regularity of the strummed rhythm becomes hypnotic.
Black metal tonalities and emotions certainly present themselves, but the mid-paced tempo is relaxed by comparison to most of that genre, with thunderous halftime rhythms from the drum set allowing a head nodding groove to propagate. This makes the blast beat sections that do appear into a welcome contrast, and the band never feels stuck at a particular energy level.
The dense, highly driven yet clear and melodic guitar tone is most similar to Aaron Turner of Isis. Unlike a great many crushingly slower bands, Kevel don't seem to have drastically down tuned, making full of use of the higher ranges of their guitars in full, lush chords and melodic embellishments. Pentatonic doom metal this is not; rather an ethereal environment with subtle emotion in the crevices. The clever production incorporates layers of additional clean guitar and subtle ambience without employing a full time synth player.
At times they remind me of a slower version of modern black metal bands such as Nightbringer, which have abandoned the rawness of first generation black metal for a focus on riff writing, exploration of melancholic tonal subtleties, rich guitar tone and epic storytelling. Rather than the cathartic, at times triumphant climaxes we might receive at the end of a Neurosis or Isis song, these songs have black metal's restless wandering quality, a sense of movement that never really comes to a place of rest or resolving. In this sense, it is a very dark album, a sense of struggle with no certain promise of relief.
The vocals are a kind of shadowy rasp not nearly high pitched enough to be a black metal shriek. If anything, I would say they are a flavour of death metal vocals you might find from a Scandinavian melodeath band, but mixed low and with quite of verb, to give them an atmospheric, de-emphasized quality. They do not distract, but aren't particularly notable either. This is a guitar focused album.
Though genres are mixed here, I wouldn't say this band is particularly original or distinct in this modern era, as there are a large number of 'post black metal' sort of projects in modern metal, and many of these riffs wouldn't be out of place coming from the 'blackened' school of modern death metal, like Gorguts, Ulcerate or Ulsect. Whether or not this album sounds fresh to you will depends on your affinities (or lack there of) to the finer gradations of sound within these styles.
I greatly enjoyed Kevel's label debut. The songwriting, performance and production are admirable, the band conjuring a rainy, melancholic expanse of trees and mountains before your eyes with their skilful construction. The guitar tone and production in general are quite pleasing to the ear, and the heaviness of the band's rhythm is truly formidable. It isn't the most surprising or singularly distinct album to hear from the post black metal scene, but it is solidly written and played without a doubt.