BLACK HOWLING: "A Soul Departed to the Unknown"

In addition to the full-length Melancholy of a Pagan Bucolic Spirit, another release, named A Soul Departed to the Unknown, came out at the same date, offering a single 18-minute piece of raw, inconsistent, wandering black metal as Black Howling as always, and a sweet supplement it indeed is to the full-length, conveying atmospheres of even darker, more haunting territories than the nature centered album.

A recurring mysterious melody, though very obscurely audible by guitars, is prominent thanks to the underlying bass guitar and the synths, kicking in the EP in raw, next to indecipherable mess of a production. It is spacey, gloomy, and requires proper attention - listening to this with bad speakers is no option, unless you're aiming for harsh noise wall or a similar subgenre... The song retains its somewhat structured form (a basic beat in moderate tempo and distant unhinged screechs along with the other instrumentation) until around seven minutes when things (hell) get loose and all seems to be partially improvised chaos, and it works to great extents! Slowly, the songs shapes up again, gradually involving the ethereal keyboard notes in, tom drums pummelling in the background. The final explosion doesn't happen until the shivering moment at 15:30 when the brisance shatters the black metal chaos all around, and some time later fades out.

From the above it becomes evident that this is no worthless additional material paling in the shadow of the full-length, but an actual, individual Black Howling release deserving the same attention as any other output of theirs. To some degree, I even think it beats its big brother, though these two aren't distinctively comparable, as explained by their subtly different thematical approach. Some criticism could be directed to the packaging, the CD being in a DVD case which isn't to my personal likings as it makes shelving a pain in the ass, but this nagging is of course in minor role as the focus is on the music which is once again quality Black Howling, recommended to the explorers of the Portuguese underground that never stops delivering.

3.5 / 5