You know Sear Bliss, right? They bring the brass with class. They make bliss like this [snaps fingers as a demonstration of extreme ease]. They’re just like that famous old pirate joke:
“These Magyars are after me flag, yarrrrrr (on account of how good they are at their cozy niche corner of atmospheric black metal).”
Yes, this is terrible, I know. But you know what’s not terrible? Sear Bliss. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve already got the bullet points: Sear Bliss. Hungary. Brass instruments. Black metal. With that abbreviated syllabus, most of you will know whether to stay or to bail, so let’s just wait a moment for the squares and rubes to exit the hall.
Ahhh, much better. Now that it’s just us here, cozy up to the stereo and let’s get down to, ahem… brass tacks. On album number nine, Sear Bliss continues the enviable winning streak that 2018’s Letter from the Edge rejuvenated while presenting slight tweaks to their sound. The slightly odd comparison that I can’t quite shake is that Heavenly Down feels to Sear Bliss like Old Mornings Dawn feels to Summoning: coming off a possible career-high and riding that wave with equally confident songwriting and carefully intricate electronic elements.
Friend, if I tell you that what defines Sear Bliss these days is “casual elegance” you will probably think I am trying to sell you tasseled penny loafers or a dining room set. But Heavenly Down spends even more time than usual strolling through contemplative, majestic fields full of beautiful tones and unselfconscious arrangements. The production here is balanced but so unobtrusive as to be almost naked. That is, with atmospheric black metal, a lot of bands seem to skate by on the mystique of distant or muffled or peculiar production choices, and while this does sometimes add to a distinct and beneficial atmosphere, it’s refreshing to hear a band like Sear Bliss just put everything right upfront. It’s like they’re saying, “We don’t have anything to hide; we want to impress you with what we did, not with what you think we might have done.”
For black metal, Heavenly Down doesn’t aim to impress primarily with speed or heaviness. In fact, even the distortion on the guitars is fairly muted, sometimes landing in an almost jangly rock tone like a slightly heavier Ved Buens Ende. Album opener “Infinite Grey” is one of the zippiest tunes, but it takes frequent stretch-out breaks and keeps bringing back a knotty, sass-filled half-time riff. Just when it feels like the song is going to fade out on a neat interplay between band leader András Nagy’s keys and Zoltán Pál’s brass layers, it drops into an immensely satisfying heaving riff and chant that lands like the best of late-period Rotting Christ.
Each of the album’s eight songs is excellent on its own terms, but there’s a thoughtful arc to the album, a flow that elevates each piece. After the storming end to the opener, “Watershed” opens with gorgeous steel drum tones and stalks at a more restrained pace, while “The Upper World” launches into straight-ahead drumming and a soaring tremolo riff. The album’s B-side begins with the fully synth instrumental “Forgotten Deities,” which swirls and echoes cosmically like newer-school acts such as Spectral Lore or Mare Cognitum (but really more than a little bit like “Tomhet”), which in turn is followed by the punky, impatient two-step of “The Winding Path.” Pál’s horn line on the title track is perhaps the album’s most engrossing melody, but late-album highlight “Chasm” might be the strongest overall song, with its stomping intro, tumbling percussion, and clean vocal chorus that is interwoven with the brass for a truly beautiful polyphony.
Heavenly Down absolutely breezes by with its compact, 44-minute display of unassuming excellence. If you don’t know Sear Bliss, it’s never too late to join their broadcast now in-progress. At the 3:27 mark in album closer “Feathers in Ashes,” a simple, plaintive guitar lead sings out. It’s brief, unflashy, hardly even a solo, but it hands the song back to a pummeling bass anchor and return to the song’s main theme, a jagged, slashing rhythm that holds space for lovely keyboard tones. That’s the way with Sear Bliss: reaching for sky, sifting the warm earth, forging the path.
Reading this ayv5 am before the wife and child descend on me like a plague of locusts I needveome sear bliss
These guys are so interesting, it’s not exactly blistering but it’s definitely a beautiful kind if black metal, steady and very deliberate. I really love this evolution, it feels like lots of subtle changes but this is a very different album from the last.