It is widely accepted by the hordes that black metal bands do not have to be heavy, nor low tuned to matter, but never in the history of the genre has there been a record of the genre peppered with so many high notes. That’s a statement that may be impossible to prove. In fact, it may be flat out wrong, but after careful deliberation of what is one of the most exciting records of 2011 one thing is for sure; black metal as we know it has never been so bright.
That is, if by bright we mean those high notes that axeman Nameless Void plays and plays time and time again. Take “Lamentations of Ashes” for instance, the first real scorcher of the record. It is trad metal in structure, NWOBHM by default and very black in spirit. It is almost as if Mercyful Fate had been bathed in acid and simmered in lava. The high guitar notes though, exhilarating as they may be, on occasion sound like the band’s own interpretation of the twin guitar attack. Void has squeezed out all traces of melody and flashes through his fretboard in a crazed arrangement of rampant notes. Fast and desperate, he alternates distortion and fast riffage.
“Lamentations of Ashes” is a great example of Negative Plane's take on metal; incongruent black metal. Highly personal and oblique, the songs of Negative Plane sound like baroque music from bizarro world, turned electric and and at times, turned inside out. The beginning of “Angels of Veiled Bone” is incandescent. Downright pretty before going down in a barrage of atonal riffs and being embalmed in a heavenly chorus. All this, heard through the speakers darkly. One tends to think of Blut Aus Nord when presented with the description ‘atonal’, but Negative Plane could not be further from the French, sonically speaking.
As the album is titled Stained Glass Revelations, it may be an indication not only of the music but of the actual sound. The production is tacit and simple. Gritty and earthly. It is not that everything sounds in its right place, it is more that as intricate and elaborate as the music of Negative Plane may be, it is presented with such caustic and moist sounds, it is all quite pure. Stained Glass Revelations is all cavernous and dark. Hazy and dizziness-inducing. Even between songs, when church organ shapes up bridges between the not so secular passages, it all just seems the backwards reflection of Negative Plane’s metal.
Written by Bobby Peru
