UMUR "Iteration" is the debut EP by Greek black metal act Vacantfield. The EP was released in November 2011 by Duplicate Records.

The music on the 3 track EP is avant garde tinged black metal. It´s not wildy avant gardish but there is an influence from especially Ved Buens Ende that provides an avant garde edge to the music. The vocals are mostly raspy and raw but there are occasional monotone clean vocals featured in the music too. After listening to the first track on the EP called "Broken Shaped Atom" I´m pretty impressed by the dark atmosphere the band are able to conjure up and therefore it´s a bit of a disappointment that neither "Worms Of Sulphur" nor "White Knuckled Cosmos" quite live up to the promise of "Broken Shaped Atom". The quality is generally solid though and it´s obvious that the band have put great effort into producing an original release and that´s always admirable. The organic sound production and the addition of some eerie sounding synths provide the atmospheric music with the last touch of darkness and it suits the music perfectly.

"Iteration" is a pretty decent beginning to a musical career and while the quality is a bit up and down there are more highs than lows and I´d say a 3.5 star (70%) rating is warranted.

Time Signature White knuckled black metal...

Genre: avant-garde black metal

The Greek black metal scene is spawning a lot of interesting projects and interesting releases these years. Vacantfield's debut release, the "Iteration"-EP definitely belongs to the category of interesting Greek black metal releases.

While rooted in the black metal universe, making use of a lot of the black metal aesthetics - such as the riffing, the use of dissonance, and the drumming style -, the three tracks on this EP are full of elements that might take some listeners by surprise. For instance, strange keyboard-, organ- and electronica-parts pop up every now and then, which definitely makes the music quite interesting sonically (in some ways slightly similar to Abhor's music), sometimes even coming across as lush (this applies especially to some passages of 'Worms of Sulphur' towards the end.

The vocals are also unusual for black metal, as the the vocalist makes use of a more guttural thrashy style of singing, combining it with an almost chanting and droning clean voice, which, to some listeners, might take some time to get used to. The overall sound production is also more along the lines of modern thrash metal than the lo-fi production that is typical of a lot of black metal, and there are also a couple of thrash metal elements to be heard on this release.

On the whole "Iteration" is a very interesting release that takes its starting point in the aesthetics of black metal, but add avant-garde and progressive elements the generate a quite original style of black metal. This is a very strong debut release, and it is going to be very interesting to hears future output from this Greek black metal act.