Black Devotion

One of black metal’s many paradoxes is that its greatest strengths and weaknesses can occasionally be exactly the same thing. Raging, blasting, icy simplicity can very easily become tedious, humdrum simplicity, depending entirely on the ear of the beholder. Some bands, like, perhaps, Inferno, master a simple template and in doing so build a wall around themselves so that they never come close to being anything else. Again, that’s black metal, and no doubt there are many musicians happily inhabiting that world sneering at the suggestion of bowing to the mainstream weaklings by introducing a little bit of deviation.

Of course, that can be a great thing. This music doesn’t have such a devoted following for no reason. The Norse black metal template is wonderfully primed to give habitation to clattering, animalistic venom and imperious atmosphere, and in turn these things, when present are what actually make it worth listening to. And despite being Czech, it’s that style to which Inferno are committed.

Thus, what makes Black Devotion a good album is its unadulterated black metal passion. (Clearly, they aren’t kidding with that title). Praiseworthy comparisons are obvious. Perhaps the best one is Enthroned; it has that “lots of melodies without being what you might call ‘melodic’” feel to its tremolo riffing, and the frequent use of surprisingly accessible hooks, although they are never luxuriated in as they are with those Belgian warhorses. A closer, equally apt comparison is the work of labelmates Malfeitor, who rattle away in a similarly frill-less fashion.

Highlights include Eaten By Rats Forever if simply for its name, although the song is worthy in a “Horna-with-a-softer-edge” way; its whirring melodies are a little Sargeist. Superior is Holy Poison, though, with its winding, knotted riff-shapes.And the lengthy Altar of Perversity is enlivened by flashy drumming, although generally instruemental trickery is non-existent here.

And also thus, what makes Black Devotion only a good album, is the same thing: its unadulterated black metal passion. To pull off something special with these types of records, you need that intangible malevolence that the best bands have in bucketloads, but which Inferno don’t ever quite generate. It could come in the form of blistering fury, as with Behexen, or arcane unease, as with Pensees Nocturnes. Or even through rickety, pestilential body-pit aesthetics of Peste Noire. But Black Devotion gets a little bogged down in its relentless blasting, which doesn’t have enough accessibility to give you an easy listen, but which isn’t scary enough to transport you anywhere truly alien either. So it sort of falls between two stools. A decent but familiar album, better than many of its kind but behind black metal’s elites.