siLLy puPPy
One of the many one-man black metal bands out there these days, RIVE which is the project of Danthor Wildcrow stands out somewhat for coming from the extreme northern Norwegian archipelago Svalbard which sits way up in the Arctic Ocean. This whole chain of islands only has a population of about 3000 inhabitants and given that the winters are long, cold and utterly desolate, it’s not surprising to find that depressive black metal has found its way into the hearts and minds of the angsty youth who’ve had enough of chance encounters with polar bears.
As RIVE, Wildcrow has released one EP and this so far only full-length album titled SORG however both the EP “Trist” as well as SORG have two versions each, one with vocals and one just instrumental. In Norwegian RIVE means “tear” as in what you cry and SORG means “grief” as in what you feel when you’re stuck on a big fucking icy landmass in the middle of fucking nowhere and want to get the fuck out. This bleak procession through nine tracks will blacken 50 1/2 minutes of your life and attempts to make you feel as bleak and hopeless as a polar beat stuck on an iceberg.
Like most depressive black metal, this stuff churns on at mid-tempo with caustic guitar riffs punctuated by clean guitar downtime with occasional bursts of energy that include blastbeats and full black metal fury. The vocals are basically some primeval screams that are as unintelligible as a mouthful of marbles and isn’t too far in style from established depressive black metal acts like Sweden’s Shining, Xasthur or Trist. The music is as expected - cold, hypnotic, detached and noisy. Despite the despondent and repetitive nature of this style of black metal, RIVE does deliver a nice mix of various tempos and Debbie downer doses of depression.
Nothing revolutionary here in the least but for those who just can’t get enough of monotonous metal apathy fueled by explosive outbursts of black metal majesty then you could do worse than RIVE’s so far sole full-length release SORG however it’s unfortunate that there’s also not much on this album to differentiate it from similarly minded bands that fixate on suicide, nihilism, self-hatred and unrelated misery. While not my favorite style of black metal, checking out an album or two now and again hits the spot and this Svalbard act has all the right ingredients to take things to the next level provided he can thaw out long enough to deliver the goods.