Hrob – Brána Chladu (Heterogeneitic Brumal Death Doom)
Everything about this album is so damn cohesive, even something so apparently simple as the album title, because nothing escapes the clutches of Slovakia’s Hrob. Yet we have fools out there referring to this as “putrid” because they lack the skill to understand the finer details of a band’s sound. Brána Chladu reveals not a cavernous assault, nor an abyss, and neither is it sludgy, downtuned, and the like, if one’s preference is pulling out tiresome analogies and much-worn verbiage shat from many a thesaurus. Instead, understand this, you will here find something sui generis, as the cold, icy wastes of the band’s sound batters the fragile skin wrapped tight about your bones. We all wither would be the the short of it, but let me add some more words to taste.
The approach Hrob cleverly uses here, to start, is one of pervasive heterogeneity (look, you can learn words here, too). This band isn’t simply categorized in a particular genre or approach, rather they push the absolute limits of the finite forms found in most death doom. In fact, I was rather impressed with the amount of surprise packed into this. Brána Chladu is consistently frigid, but this never becomes prepotent; rather, it’s an omnipresent sentiment that pervades every second, or more importantly ever detail, of this release. Hrob is both cold and an architect of. From the cover, with the lovely tower of tortured, frozen faces upon drifting snow, to track titles like “Tiene stromov” (“Shadows of Trees”), which manifest the cold lack of light, the gelid riffs and bass have no better home than the one that Hrob so carefully constructed here about of the brumal fragility of life. Even the most raw of or classique of black metal could never hope to get as cold as you’ll find here.
Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls
Hrob – Brána Chladu
Memento Mori, Night Terror Records
Cover Art: Honza Vlášek (Jan Vlášek)
4.5 / 5
