Auriferous Flame – The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers Review

[Cover art by Gilded Panoply Artwork]

When Ayloss first started Auriferous Flame, it appeared that he would use it for more traditional black metal expression, as The Great Mist Within was emotive, melodic, atmospheric, and as serene as it was somewhat suspenseful. He has since turned the project into the most violent and battle-hardened music in his entire oeuvre, making that debut seem like the calm before a proverbial storm. Sophomore effort Ardor for Black Mastery brought quite the storm, adding heaps of aggressive thrash to the swirling maelstrom of epic and atmospheric black metal Ayloss is most known for in Spectral Lore. It maintained quite a bit of that “battle viewed from above” feel at times, but a lot of it was right in the thick of the real shit.

The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers sheds the rest of that bird’s eye view. This is the sound of really being in a maelstrom of mud, swords, blood, and shields (and horses and siege engines and maybe some Mûmakil and everything else). It’s the single most bludgeoning recording Ayloss has ever put down, in and out of your ears in barely over a half hour and leaving nothing but devastation. Even when it slows down ‒ such as during some doomier material or the eerie, warbling middle sections of the nearly 16-minute “The Insurrectionists” ‒ it still doesn’t feel like you’re out of it, just blurry and glossed over after getting your noggin conked by the blunt end of a weapon.

The major of that track is made up of bludgeoning thrash working as an undercurrent for Ayloss’s typical atmospheric black metal, with all the progressive scope, ragefully bellowed vocals, slippery riffs, deceptively serene chanting, and heaps of swirling leads that entails. While these two styles may seem disparate on paper, they are never at odds in practice—the sounds for which Ayloss is more known help to provide a massive scale for the violence, while the thrash completely recontextualizes the typical expanse of his black metal. The result is that Auriferous Flame sounds both grandiose in setting and intimate in its incessant pummeling. Think of it as “castle black metal” where every hall, passageway, chamber, and privy has broken out in bloody battle, or an alternative universe version of Hammerheart where Quorthon was obsessed with Testament riffs.

To add to the onslaught, each of these three tracks is more intense than the last, possibly achieved by condensing the runtimes without reducing the number of riffs and leads (tracks 2 and 3 are only about 7 to 8 minutes). “The Caretakers” might start in a more typical Ayloss fashion ‒ churning riffs and leads, eased up drumming, and scene-setting spokals ‒ but quickly bursts into an all-out assault of supremely epic thrash, all bombastic impacts and trills and squirrelly leads and snare-hammered rhythms. Even what would normally be a really featured solo has to fight for space with the riff brutality and desperately barking vocals, just to add to the impression that all hell has broken loose (the result is a wicked cool moment). “An Oration to The Storm” is even more relentless and headbangable, with so many hooks and irresistible riffs tossed at the listener that the quiet outro feels like a reprieve, spooky and unsettling that it may be.

The mood of that outro is key, because The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers doesn’t exactly sound like it was meant to have a happy ending. Like much of Ayloss’s work in recent years, this record communicates the feel of a constant struggle. The battle might have ended, but the war is eternal, and musically at least, that war means yet another really kickass album from Auriferous Flame.