Don’t Cut the Crusts Off – Black Monolith, YAITW, and the New Black

Originally written by Jordan Campbell

Metal fans are constantly railing against whatever they perceive to be fashionable. It’s a behavior we pick up at metallic birth, as soon as we penetrate the first rung of the underground. Upon discovering our first “real” metal bands, we immediately start lobbing scorngrenades at surface-level goons. And for some, this attack-mode mentality doesn’t fade with age. Whether you’re a grindhead complaining about the “crossover appeal” and “unbalanced coverage” of Gridlink and Wormrot or a black metallist that’s bitter because Bölzer sold all their merch at MDF in a matter of minutes, the urge to bellow from below is part of the countercultural identity.

That’s a problem, though. Taking that mentality too far into the depths can be self-defeating, and soon enough, you’re doing damage on the lateral plane. Case in point: Our general tentativeness towards the recent uptick in “blackened crust.”

Black metal fans are especially wary of intelopers, and for good reason. Recent history has brought us tourist crimes of varying severity: The out-of-touch and poorly-edited Until the Light Takes Us; the oft-tepid black n’ Load of Black Anvil; Liturgy’s fifteen minutes.

But we need to be honest with ourselves about two things: 1) Black metal is actually more vital right now than it was a decade ago, when the scene was rife with monochromatic Darkthrone and Xasthur clones, and 2) Black metal is our punk rock. It was spawned as an act of rebellion, and it’s only truly effective when it takes that form. The marriage between the blast beat and the d-beat is not only totally organic, but it’s been a long time coming.

Despite the similarities between the two worlds, few acts have succeeded in melding them well. For every upstart like Fifteen Dead there’s been a flaccid dud like Hot Graves. But this year, the pseudo-genre has taken a sharp turn into medium-time credibility, as Black Monolith and Young and in the Way have crafted two of the year’s finest records.

Black Monolith released a vicious demo back in 2011—and, along with Dead Instrument, are the second band ever to successfully pull off “crappy vinyl blinds” as a legitimate cover aesthetic—which unrested more on the violent punk end of the spectrum. But the solo act’s debut full-length, Passenger, compounds that formula substantially. The majority of the record is sweltering black metal; melodic, yet just raw enough. Tracks like “Adhere” blend the jangly desperation of sister act Deafheaven with the party-pummel of Wolfbrigade. (That latter influence is more palpable in the rollicking “Victims and Hangmen,” which combines speedrock spirit /wild-ass soloing with blackened despair. Somehow, it works.)

But what makes Passenger such a brilliant record is the pacing. The styles braid together seamlessly, only to separate as needed with a bizarre fluidity. It shares a compositional thread with Sunbather; where that record created signposts with its extended interludes, Passenger switches gears with raging bursts of crust-fucked fury. These cuts are an absolute blast, but the record succeeds because the black metal elements are fully actualized. The result is one of the year’s most riveting records.

(Dis)similarly, Young and in the Way have dialed up the blackness considerably on their latest LP, When Life Comes to Death. Previous records such as Amen and I Am Not What I Am were delightfully ragged, all teeth and venom, unencumbered by self-consciousness and genre convention. When Life Comes to Death, their first “big” record (via Deathwish), is steroid-jacked, heavy-as-balls BM. The faster numbers roll like one of Marduk’s Panzers, while sensual slow jams like “Take My Hand” channel Inquisition‘s intergalactic lurch.

But the reason why both of these records rip so hard is simple: They fucking rock. YAITW rippers “Be My Blood” and “Weep in My Dust” hit harder than any contender in years. And that’s because black metal, with all its self-aggrandizing Satanism and spiked gauntlets and Dark Funeral tour buses, has gotten bloated. These guys are putting it back in the gutter. Where it belongs.

Both black metal and hardcore reached a point where they lost the plot; black metal with the aforementioned big-budget rockstar bullshit (something Watain is trying their damnedest to resurrect, though with considerably more swag), hardcore with glossed-up toughguy bro-pandering. Both have been circling earthward since, as practitioners have recognized that the rigidity of both styles had sapped them of life. (Quick, when was the last time you listened to a slicked-up, blast-salad norsecore record? That’s what I thought.)

And while both of these acts briefly fall prey to current trends (Black Monolith uses a cloying Deafheaven clonejob as a closer, while YAITW tries an Agallochian ballad and fails miserably), they’re the leading black metal simultaneously downward and forward. The tide started to swing a few years back: Woe‘s A Spell For the Death of Man folded “wrong” hardcore riffing into Scandinavian stomp, while the Black Twilight Circle—most notably with Axeman and Odz Manouk—tore the damn thing back down to early Burzum primitivism. They triggered a wave, however subconsciously, and Black Monolith and YAITW are riding it into the new black.

Where does that leave the ‘core averse? Missing the plot and missing out. Our natural reaction is to eat ourselves. To build up and tear down. But cool it on the cannibalism, kids. Take a minute to taste the architecture.

It’ll take your breath with force.

Posted by Old Guard

The retired elite of LastRites/MetalReview.

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