Never judge a book by its cover may be sage advice but there has to be something to be taken from an album cover – there is always some connection between the aesthetics and the music and little excuse these days for shoddy packaging. Netherbird have no worries there with another beautiful Necrolord image gracing the cover; a stone angel against a tempestuous background. Combining it with a legible logo and the title of 'Monument Black Colossal' did, however, cause warning bells to start jabbering away in my mind; my tolerance levels of Dimmu Borgir styled symphonic Black Metal is way down these days.
This, however, is more Dissection stripping down 'Cruelty And The Beast' period Cradle Of Filth, mining the gold, adding a shade of Solefald's 'The Linear Scaffold' and rebuilding it shorn of any of the soggy, velvet thick self indulgence that can creep into such orchestral exercises. Don't be mistaken though; this is still grandiose, melodic, Gothic styled black metal. Dark, romantic, and unremittingly over the top.
The second full length effort from these Swedish melodic demons opens with a standard piano and cello in a rainstorm (which I'm sure can't be good for your instruments...). Levity and predictability aside though, it is a soft introduction before the oddly titled 'Whitenoise Sky In Overdrive' takes over.
Immediately there are those elegant, mournful guitar lines so redolent of Cradle Of Filth circa 'Cruelty And The Beast' cutting through the keyboard swathe and driven on harder by the spot on drumming of journeyman Adrian Erlandsson (CoF, the Haunted etc) who surely felt at home here. The vocals of Nephente spit and snarl, dipping into the lower register for slower, sweeping parts and stretching to a strangled scream in time for the ebb and flow refrain to hit you again with those tiger claw sized hooks. Despite the gear shifts and twists it is nevertheless a short, snappy stall setting song and a classy one at that.
'A Faraway View', another windswept interlude with distant church bells seemingly calling a congregation, bursts into 'A Shadow in The Garden Of Darkness. It is a narrative of eerie, doomed townsfolk in an epic landscape thanks to the expansive Netherbird guitar sound from Bizmark and Johan Nord and the lilting melody morphs into razor sharp attack turned even harder by some of Tobias Gustafsson's malevolent bass work and the slave-master drumming. And all this inside of four minutes when other bands would have felt the need to triple the time just to make the same point.
The fifth track, 'Strindbergian Fire' brings in the pipe organ sound, if you wondered when it was going to appear. Frantic, edged riffing with occasional discordant twists gallops into a more thunderous downtuned sound until the clouds part and a misty keyboard draped clearing is revealed.
Nephente is strong throughout, having a closer link between his higher and lower registers than many BM vocalists. Similarly the time changes work smoothly within the flow of the songs in a more tidal way than the patchwork changes often foisted on the listener. Perhaps that is the key here: Flow. The parts flow along the whole song, the songs into the canvas of the album. The relatively soft tones of the string intro on 'The Weight Of Vapour' don't seem as sudden to me as they have their carved niche within the album and by the time the vocals bitterly declare “If I had gods, this would be when I would race up to face them. I'd cut out their eyes...” I was with them.
The prettily titled 'At The Bottom Of The Crystal Artery' with its growled beginning and choral backed, thicker riffs lead you to the simpler attack of 'In the Eyes Of Time' just to give you time to breathe before the enigmatic closer 'Across The Chasm'. Whispered tones turn to soaring scream and a dash of a more death metal chug and then they're gone.
With only a couple of songs just over the six minute mark and an album clocking in at a commendably compact forty odd minutes (compact for this genre!), the dark, flamboyant black metal orchestration that Netherbird have created is remarkable and makes you think that 'Monument Black Colossal' isn't such a vainglorious title after all.
I suppose I could say that yes, this is safe in that there ARE no surprises. Yes, this is melodic black metal styled music with Gothic and classical references in the lyrics and saying that it wears its musical influences on its sleeve is a little like saying Primal Fear have done a bit of Judas Priest now and then. But that doesn't detract one iota from the fact that when it is done this well and with this much style, that they have, for me, outdone the last three or four CoF albums, then it surely should be about the songs. I have no idea if the market for this kind of music is still there (though a check of the Waterstones 'Paranormal Romance'... er, sorry...'Horror' section says it should be), but the songs are memorable, entertaining, emotionally performed and it put a smile on my face. I probably shouldn't like this but, damn, if it isn't a great listen.
http://www.myspace.com/netherbird
http://www.netherbird.com/
