Artist: Setherial
Title: Ekpyrosis
Type: Album
Label: Regain Records

Oh Setherial. Perhaps more than most in the black metal scene, here is a band whose career has forever languished in the shadow of their debut. To some (me included), 1996's 'Nord' represents one of the strident highlights of the genre. Relentless, windswept, intricate and frozen, it took the galloping hysteria of Emperor's 'In the Nightside Eclipse' and ratcheted the intensity up by several notches, weaving lengthy, labyrinthine and epic hymns. And ever since, Setherial have stoically released album after album of diminishing returns, enduring line-up change after line-up change and never really managing to recapture the magic of old. There have been moments, certainly - parts of 2000's 'Hell Eternal' come close - but each and every time, one is left with a vague sense of disappointment that the band seemed to be sinking into an increasingly crowded mire of Swedish BM mediocrity.

2010 therefore sees the band unleash their sixth full-length, 'Ekpyrosis' and the rhetoric is strong, the artwork convincing, the line-up settled. With countrymen Watain making headlines and Marduk reinvigorated, Swedish BM is once more in the ascent and the timing seems right. Could we have a valid contender from a band who have always managed to lurk just beneath the surface? Not really, I'm sad to say. Setherial are trying hard here - very hard - but something just doesn't add up. The last two albums have seen the band throw some more technical, discordant - dare I say progressive? - moments into the mix but to these ears, they have never sat all that comfortably within the band's sound. 'Ekpyrosis' finds Setherial once again at this game and with mixed results. Sections of tracks are awesome but generally, they do not hang together or manage to maintain listening interest. 'Thoughts of Life, They Wither' is a prime example of this, lurching from blasting fury to distended grimness without any real conviction for either approach. Vicious, well-played and incisive it may be but it sorely lacks impact or staying power.

Not only that, but once again, the band seem to have opted for the super-clean production that has hamstrung some of their later efforts. 'Ekpyrosis' for all it's intended malice, is simply too polished, too smooth and too easy on the ears to annihilate the listener to the degree the band have obviously intended. It's frustrating as - just when one has given up hope - the band unleash 'The Mournful Sunset of the Forsaken' which is easily the best thing they have written in the last ten years and a glimpse of that ice-cold genius returns. Still treading water they may be but it seems after all that some of the steps Setherial are taking are in the right direction.

http://www.myspace.com/setherialsweden