If you aren’t familiar with the name Costin Chioreanu, you’re likely familiar with his art, which is finding its way onto heavy metal album covers with increasing frequency. So curiosity was naturally piqued to see his name attached to Romania’s Bloodway, in which he handles guitars and vocals alongside Mihai Andrei on bass and Para on drums. Full length debut Mapping the Moment with the Logic of Dreams follows last year’s debut EP, and fits squarely into about zero easily-defined categories. Even in its more straightforward moments, it’s an odd one.
Not that the mix of progressive black metal, thrash, dark sludge, post-hardcore, and various other elements reads as all that strangely on paper, but when combined, the experience is unique. When things are cooking, the music comes across as some power trio mix of Ved Buens Ende, Valborg, and even touches of Mastodon. And yet, despite the converging styles, there’s a natural, live-in-the-studio ease to the music, which helps to give the album a flowing, appropriately narrative vibe.
There is, however, the matter of Chioreanu’s vocals. To put it lightly, the man has a shrill delivery, coming in somewhere between the highest register of tortured hardcore screamers and the more articulate of black metal screechers. Barren, tortured, and again, shrill. “The Transfinite Castaway” begins in rather dark/doom territory, easing the listener in, but when it hits some rather punctuated, simplistic rhythms, Chioreanu’s voice makes its first appearance, ringing out like an alarm of madness. Here, the approach works, as it does on most of the album.
In a few instances, when the vocals take on some vibrato and become more of a shrill singing, the contrast between vocal and background music becomes a bit too much. While these passages are strewn throughout Mapping, they truly only become a problem on the “Mirror Twins,” the album’s most overtly “catchy” and shortest song (aside from the intro). Despite all intention – and make no mistake, you don’t form a vocal delivery such as this without it being completely intentional – this song is an overreach of contrast.
Elsewhere, the album offers plenty of excitement, particularly for fans of adventurous music that still has its roots in rock. “Walking Past Near the Lighthouse” transitions from chugging oddity to the kind of lead work that would be fitting for Iron Maiden if it weren’t so draped in eerie atmosphere. “Early Glade Test Pilot” has some of the most flowing melodic guitar work on the album, but hints at a more blackened approach before exploding into a torrent of blast beats later on. Instrumental “A Hallow Bridge” sees the band’s chemistry in full effect, and fittingly features a twisted saxophone guest spot from Sigh’s Dr. Mikannibal.
By the closing title track, it is clear that Bloodway is layering their ideas and dissonant hooks for maximum effect. Of course, many listeners will simply not be able to get past the vocals, which is understandable given their grating and alienating nature. But the more one listens to this album, the more the space between the vocals and music begins to take on a life of its own. It’s an odd effect that will likely only appeal (or even appear) to certain listeners, but it’s an effect nonetheless.
In the end, Mapping the Moment with the Logic of Dreams is likely to appeal to far more people as a piece of ambitious artistic intrigue than it is an addictive heavy metal album, but for the select few, the former is exactly what will make it the latter.
