This is one of those albums where my perception changes, the more I listen to it. At the beginning I would have said that “Blackest Day” is always interesting, a bit oddball and not an easy album to listen to. Now it’s if the pieces of a jigsaw are assembling themselves. 66Crusher are from Norway and play Progressive Metal with a difference.
The album starts smoothly and robustly enough. The vocals are pained and distant but not unpleasant. Quiet passages and evocative guitar work create a mood which is not entirely comfortable. “Blackest Day” is strong track. I sensed the ambience of Audrey Horne without it sounding like them. This is not entirely surprising as the mixing engineer operates for their fellow Norwegians as well as Enslaved. “Warmonger” combines the technicality of Zero Hour with the irregularity and eccentricity of Atrox. But then who said that Progressive music has to be fluent or regular. Again it’s strange and slightly disturbing. “Unsaid” is another unusual track, but recognisable in that it has a solid guitar rhythm. It’s deep and dark, slow and wavering, wistful and reflective. This is an album of moods.
Whilst the first three tracks give us a taster of the band’s range, the album gets down to business with “Concept of Elimination”. Again there is a range of musical statements. It’s more upbeat than the previous tracks. It’s technical and the unsettling play between distance and familiarity that the singer manages to create is always there. There is a pattern but it’s unsteady. It’s Progressive in style. There’s pain in the air. It slows down and the track moves away from the electric guitar into a slower and wistful classical guitar section. It gets heavier again and out of the blue comes a magnificent Opeth-like passage. The following track “Recreated Reality” features another exquisite and dreamy guitar solo which Opeth could have created. Before that the form is sufficiently avant-garde that it’s not one that’s so easily recognised. The singer is on another planet. Technical guitar work intervenes and goes off in its own direction, in almost a jazz style. The track ends as bizarrely as it began.
If ambiance is what you’re seeking, “Borderline” is overflowing with it. The rhythm is funky and sophisticated. It has warmth. Mellowness and calm run though its veins. There’s a periodic explosion but it’s never out of the context of this sensitive and electrifying track. To the ambiance of Opeth, Riverside can be added. This album specialises in variety and following “Borderline” is the slow and melancholic “Shipwrecked”. It does burst into life but it made me think of a modern day version of the Moody Blues classic “Nights in White Satin”. Not so great. But we don’t have to wait too long for the next invention. This time it’s “Diminished Mind”, an avant-garde technical Prog feat. Flamboyant guitar work mixes with an unexpectedly dark canvas and the plaintive singer who sounds faintly like Joe Cocker at this point. “Diminished Mind” is an appropriate track title. It sounds like we’re going darkly down a slippery slope. The closing track “Us Beneath the Sea” is dark and melancholic but unlike “Shipwrecked”, it is made special by the sublimely mellow guitar work. The vocalist sings softly and dreamily, and the album is brought to an atmosphere-laden end.
I really liked the fact that the heaviness and technicality on “Blackest Day” blend in, almost to the point of being unnoticeable, and act as a vehicle for ambiance. An open mind is needed for this limitless album of many moods. It’s quirky, yet it’s classic. Most of all, it’s exotic. “Blackest Day” is Progressive metal at its best.
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http://www.66crusher.com
Andrew Doherty
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