May 2023 - Feature Release - The North Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The North has been nominated by Xephyr. It's the brand new "Τρωθησομένη" third album from one-man Chinese dissonant black metal outfit Ὁπλίτης (or Hoplites as they're generally referred to in the English-speaking media).

https://metal.academy/releases/43777

OK, so a one-man black metal project, releasing their second album of the year only three months after the first, does not bode well too often I would suggest. Despite all the initial outward impressions of Hoplites promising Hellenic Black Metal, the project is actually from Ningbo in Zhejiang province, China and so has caught me on the back foot from the off. In order to get a better feel for Τρωθησομένη, I first went and listened to Hoplites' earlier release from the start of the year, Ψευδομένη. This is an album of full-blooded, blasting, dissonant black metal with a heavy death metal influence. Liu Zhenyang chucks everything at it, presenting a bit of a wall-of-sound with a drum machine that, even though it's a machine, sounds like it's about to have an aneurysm, so much blasting is it asked to do. Of course, I'm not keen on such obvious use of drum machines, so that is a minus point I'm afraid. The whole album feels constipated and restricted, despite the dissonant elements being to the fore and he doesn't allow the tracks any time to breathe, so the listener is just battered relentlessly with no time to take stock of things, which I think is something you need to be able to do with a technical/dissonant album of metal like this otherwise it just feels like a beating.

So to Τρωθησομένη, the album in question. Well, this time around the album doesn't feel like quite so much of a pummelling, even though it is in a very similar vein. I feel the drum machine takes a bit more of a back seat, sounding a bit more pushed down in the mix, allowing the riffs more ear time, especially as the dissonant leadwork seems to be less persistent, a lot of the dissonance being derived from the constantly-shifting rhythms - aided by a more prominent bass sound. The riffs are, may I say, a bit more accessible, even verging on thrash riffs on a number of occasions and the whole affair feels less intense than on the previous album. That said, it still doesn't do a whole lot for me and I continue to struggle with the dissonant elements in the same way as I do with excess technicality - it just doesn't rev my engine to be honest. I can hear what is being striven for here, but it isn't my cup of tea and I don't have enough knowledge of the genre to judge exactly how successful Hoplites has been in his endeavour.

3/5

Hmm...

The first black metal album that I got to listen to in 2023 is this one from a one man Chinese project called Hoplites [Ὁπλίτης]. Although to call this a black metal record might be a little deceiving. This record certainly has plenty of titanic open chordal progressions in the main guitar, but on more than a few occasions, the record transforms into these chugging riffs that would not sound out of place on a record by Vektor or Revocation.  And while it certainly is not my cup of tea, I must commend Ὁπλίτης for keeping my attention locked into the album for the full runtime as I never felt like I knew where these tracks were going. The lack of a distinct tonal center allows the performer to not fall into any trends through the compositions. 

That being said, it will make it difficult for someone to appreciate these songs as they feel very wishy-washy with the emotion that they try to evoke. At one second you can be carried away by the sweet black metal guitars, blast beat percussion and vocal howls, then without warning, you're pulled down into the depths with chugging guitar riffs and devilish gutturals. And then Ὁπλίτης will even throw in a metalcore style breakdown just for fun, as if metalcore kids will ever find enjoyment out of a record such as this! But I will admit, hearing Ὁπλίτης transition out of track 7 into track 8 while using the same fundamental groove from the breakdown to create something completely original was impressive. Overall, this is a record that has chops, but chops don't do it for me anymore. An extreme metal band has to use those chops in new and exciting ways to impress me not just as musicians, but as songwriters as well. And even though Ὁπλίτης are new and exciting, they still haven't figured out the songwriting part yet.

5/10

Here's my review:

If there’s one thing the modern black metal scene is good for it’s one-man bands with every man & his dog seemingly having multiple solo projects on the go these days. If there’s another it’s super-dense & heavily compressed production jobs with the emphasis being more on darkness & atmosphere than clarity & precision in 2023. What’s not very common though is the existence of too many quality black metal acts from countries as heavily policed as China is & that’s what we have here. In fact, I’d suggest that Hoplites (who hails from the eastern coastal province of Zheziang) may well be the most significant metal act ever to hail from the land of the red dragon. He also appears to be one of those extreme metal acts who seems to want to release new material every other week which could be regarded as a gift or an affliction depending on your opinion of the artist’s general quality & consistency. Hoplites’ sophomore album “Ψευδομένη” was only released back in January of this year but here we are looking at Liu Zhenyang’s third full-length “Τρωθησομένη” which seems to be taking his reputation to greater heights again.

What we have here is quite a complex & inaccessible record that definitely requires some commitment before it’s true worth can be evaluated as its density can be quite daunting on first listen. I’d describe Hoplites sound as sitting well within the confines of the black metal spectrum with screaming high-pitched vocals, consistently brutal & blasting drum programming & abrasive & dissonant guitar work but there’s a strong thrash metal influence to some of the riffs with Saxy’s Vektor comparison not being all that far from the mark. The artificial nature of the drumming is certainly fairly obvious to the trained ear but I don’t think it’s enough to turn anyone off & would imagine that most untrained listeners probably wouldn’t even pick up on it, especially given that so many extreme metal releases utilize some pretty inorganic drum triggers these days. Liu has no doubt spent a fair bit of time on the programming as it can hardly be described as simplistic with a lot of nuance being put into the cymbal work. There’s an element of chaos to Hoplites’ approach here though which reminds me of the mathcore-infused sound of US black metallers Serpent Column, even though I wouldn’t say that I hear any actual metalcore on the record as such. It’s more the electric energy derived from the tendency to jump around a lot with little warning that draws that comparison. The strong focus on dissonance & experimentation in the guitar work perhaps unsurprisingly brings to mind French black metal gods Deathspell Omega which can’t be a bad thing in my book either.

“Τρωθησομένη” gets off to a splendid start with three of the first four tracks sitting amongst the album highlights. In fact, the A side is very strong indeed but unfortunately the B side sees the quality dropping a bit, admittedly not enough to see me becoming bored or impatient but there can be no denying that I thought I was headed for a higher rating early on. The final track “Θεῖα Δεσμά” was really the deciding factor there as it’s the only one of the ten tracks on offer that I find no enjoyment in. If it’d been replaced or omitted then I feel that a four-star rating was well & truly on the cards but, as it is, this inclusion provided me with just enough incentive to see me reducing my score to that of a respectable but inessential release. “Τρωθησομένη” is a suffocating but inherently record that probably offers more potential than it’s actually delivered if I’m being honest.

3.5/5

On a side note, RYM has this release dual-tagged as Black Metal & Dissonant Death Metal. For the record, there's absolutely zero death metal on offer here. It's yet another case of the inadequacies of the RYM genre-tagging model as people are simply voting up Dissonant Death Metal to cover the dissonance in the black metal.

On a side note, RYM has this release dual-tagged as Black Metal & Dissonant Death Metal. For the record, there's absolutely zero death metal on offer here. It's yet another case of the inadequacies of the RYM genre-tagging model as people are simply voting up Dissonant Death Metal to cover the dissonance in the black metal.

For what it's worth, I thought the previous album sounded a lot more like blackened death metain a number of places and lazy voting may be one of the reasons for death metal being upvoted on this, i.e. the last album had some death metal on it, so this must have too.

I have done countless double-takes on this album purely on the basis that this was all put together by one person. A Chinese, one man bm project with an output frequency to rival Jute Gyte to boot. As with Jute, there is a lot going on here. The difference here is that not all of the content is bm. As other site members have pointed out there are elements of thrash metal in here and the spazzing delivery of it all definitely smells of mathcore aesthetic (even though there is no such content per se).

Those punishing levels of dissonance do get lost in the swarming chaos overall for me and I find this to come across as being more confused than well fused together. The variety in the content I sense (if I had the time and/or patience) is not that all far apart in terms of a range or scale of variation, but it is so inaccessibly pitched that I cannot bring myself to take the minutes out of my week to try and map out themes. Do not get me wrong, for one man to deliver all this is astonishing, even though it doesn't work all that well for me I have to admire the work. The fact that he is getting this out of a far flung corner of China is only all the more unbelievable. But this admiration can only go so far when I am largely unable to recall any of the record despite playing it four times this morning.

Too many ideas flung at something is never a good combination for my ears and Τρωθησομένη is no exception I am afraid.

3/5