Petrychor - Makrokosmos
Self Release
Black metal/electronica
4 songs (40:25)
Release year: 2014
Official Website
Reviewed by Charles
Hey, the new Petrychor album looks a bit different. The logo has morphed from spiky black metal style to a very chic, lower-case 70s-style thing, and look at the cover: gone are the USBM staples (either 1. a tree or 2. some trees), and instead there is a kind of sci-fi landscape (or is it one of those places in the USA that people drive out to in camper vans in order to manufacture drugs?) Looks pretty cool to me, actually. Does this also reflect some kind of shift in musical direction?

Well, maybe, actually. Some significant changes, albeit with notable elements of continuity also. While Petrychor has (at least until now) tended to fit quite snugly into the contemporary USBM landscape, it has historically had at least three ‘trademarks’ that make it instantly recognisable. Firstly, the mad, jolting leaps from quiet to screechingly loud and back again. Second, the extended acoustic guitar interludes which, while hardly groundbreaking as a concept, were distinguished by the flair in sole member Tad Piecka’s delivery. And third, the muffled, indistinct production used in the black metal sections, which gave Effigies and Epitaphs such a spectral atmosphere. All of these elements are still in play to some extent but have been somewhat altered. In his promotional notes, Piecka writes that Makrokosmos draws much inspiration from German synth music- by no means an influence that was obvious on the first album. There are very few unadulterated acoustic sections, and instead the sections in-between the black metal are more in the realm of enigmatic electronica. Actually, that’s a massive understatement: often they are the dominant element, particularly in the second half of the record.

So, opener The Place Where the Red Stars Hang, which like many Petrychor songs well surpasses ten minutes in length, starts with a long stretch of synth meandering. And I guess this serves a similar purpose to the acoustic ideas that interspersed the epics from previous releases: a quiet caress which accentuates the harshness of what is to follow. Admittedly, these bits tend to be less stripped-down than the acoustic guitar fragments- they are usually accompanied by electronic percussion and lots of layers of sound. This has knock-on effects: the characteristic contrasts are not quite as violent as they have been in the past. Another related shift which accentuates this point is the nature of the drumming; for lots of Makrokosmos, the percussion is stongly influenced by ideas imported from electronica. And so we find black metal guitar tonalities and vocals laid over weirdly laid-back electronic backbeats (see, in particular, Planets Born of Human Ash). The effect here is strange.

So it’s quite an enigmatic record, I think, to which you have to become accustomed. Personally, I miss the rawer black metal elements which, while at times still as powerful and as distinctive as ever (e.g. the climactic couple of minutes of The Place Where the Red Stars Hang), is less prominent. There are some pretty weird ideas here, probably weirdest of all on Ceaseless White. This track is typically full of jolts, although perhaps a bit more consciously structured than usual, flicking back and forth between two main ideas. It begins with a weird sort of easy listening guitar lick which is looped hypnotically for a couple of minutes before exploding into a typical Petrychor black metal section: extremely indistinct, rumbling instrumentation but highly distinct chord progressions, laden with triumphant emotion and perhaps even a bit of sentimentality (we find this combination perhaps also in Panopticon’s work, particularly on Kentucky). Then, it shifts down into that loop, now with a really hammed-up blues guitar noodling over the top, but just as it seems a bit too tongue-in-cheek, it pendulum-swings again to a black metal climax over which screams a freakish violin solo. Strange, but also probably my favourite song here.

Anyway, like I said, Petrychor is a pretty unique project. It’s nice that there has been such a clear effort to progress things on this release, but I would expect nothing less from a musician with interests as diverse as Piecka. The album is dedicated to Wilhelm of Khrysanthoney Records, who was originally intended to release the album but who passed away in May this year at the age of 32.

Killing Songs :
Ceaseless White
Charles quoted 75 / 100
Other albums by Petrychor that we have reviewed:
Petrychor - Effigies and Epitaphs reviewed by Charles and quoted 90 / 100
Petrychor - Dryad reviewed by Charles and quoted no quote
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