Mare Cognitum - Solar Paroxysm (2021)^{Release ID: 26609}

Mare Cognitum is a one man atmo bm project from the US. Heavily invested in the themes of space and cosmic mysticism, Jacob Buczarski created the project in 2011 and since then Mare Cognitum ("the sea which has become known" in Latin) have grown into an established act on the atmospheric black metal scene.  We have been treated now to five reasonably well received full-lengths and a couple of splits over the past decade and for a computer programmer, Jake takes the listener far beyond the boundaries of the planet earth and explores the universe on each of his releases.

I read an interview with him when researching my review and he is personally influenced by all the classic bm artists you'd expect (Emperor etc..) but he also listens to a lot of film and video game scores which I think comes across in the vastness of his song writing on Solar Paroxysm really well.  The triumph of this release is the scope of the album which although immense in subject matter and content also does a really great job of focusing on the details, spotlighting the album's fantastic use of pace and tempo, aggression and melody, harshness and ethereal beauty to create a truly intricate painting of the mysteries of the cosmos and Jake's mind also.

I hear a lot of influences in the sound here.  From the lush tremolos of Fen and Drudkh to the warm and full melodies of the latter of the aforementioned bands.  But there's also the earthy dankness of WITTR present in the shift, passage and flow of tracks.  The sum of all parts shows a penchant for ethereal layers of atmosphere that build into entities reminiscent of Spectral Lore and Darkspace also.  I even get a smattering of Xasthur on Terra Requiem as Jake's vocals drop into a ghastly whisper riding over a rolling tremolo riff.  What you get here is a very textured and tactile album, you almost want that amazing artwork on the cover to be raised and ridged like the music itself so you can trace your fingers along the landscape as you listen to the music.  

I could go on for hours about how good this album is.  It has caught me completely off-guard as I didn't set out on the morning I discovered this to listen to any atmospheric bm that day and instead stumbled across this masterpiece of the sub-genre.  All hail Jake Buczarski.

There are some very accomplished solo black metal artists out there currently, with projects like Paysage d'Hiver, Panopticon and Saor putting out album after album of superb atmospheric black metal. Another who deserves to be in the conversation is Jacob Buczarski, aka Mare Cognitum, who also has a very strong discography including last year's Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine, a really well received collaboration with Greek black metaller Spectral Lore. Anyway, a year on from that critical success and Mare Cognitum has released his latest solo effort, Solar Paroxysm.

Mare Cognitum's MO is atmospheric black metal with a cosmic theme, although his music tends not to be overtly cosmic in an atmospheric sense. Rather, his take on the genre involves quite aggressive atmo-black which he suffuses with some very accomplished melodies that act as a counterpoint to the blasting and so makes for a nicely layered and balanced style. Atmospherically, Solar Paroxysm feels more negative sounding than usual with plenty of heavy riffing, blastbeats and vocal savagery with very little by way of cosmic aesthetics, although he does maintain his knack for gorgeous melodies.

The album's theme relates to stellar mortality and cosmic death, it's lyrical content proclaiming the dying of stars and, in particular on Terra Requiem, the passing of the Earth and all life within. This track is probably the most evocative on the album with a dirge-like quality that intones what must inevitably come to pass. I wonder if the album's death obsession and overall negative vibe is Jacob Buczarski's personal reaction to the pandemic which he's managed to channel, via his musical alter-ego, into a cathartic primal scream. Either way it's a fine piece of work and I enjoyed it's darker tone as befits the times we are living through.

As I sure is prominent by my listening history as well as my reviews of atmospheric black metal in the past, I am typically drawn in towards the more nature and folk inspired stylings of a Panopticon or Saor. But I was thoroughly impressed by Mare Cognitum last year when I reviewed their Wanderers collaboration with Spectral Lore, which focused more on the spatial part of the ABM tag. So I made a concerted effort to listen to more from Mare Cognitum in the future.

And what I found was some very solid atmospheric black metal, which includes this, the newest album. Much of the time I have found that most of my extreme metal preferences have been towards the slower side, allowing for the melodies to take center stage. Mare Cognitum has some technically impressive foundations, but the melodies and grooves are still heavily prominent; a feat very seldom achieved in extreme metal.

The sound of this album is very pretty as well. Even though all of these songs start with a very distorted guitar which do not sound pleasant, the bass entrance fixes the guitar mixing and the rest of these songs can proceed splendidly. The album's obvious standout is “Luminous Accretion” in the way in which the song is able to grow (subtly), the vocals and guitar leads are balanced and the stickiness of the guitar lead is not that far removed from a Saor project.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album does not have the same infectiousness. While songs like “Antaresian” and “Frozen Star Divinization” sound massive and epic, they do tend to run on a little too long, and in the case of the former, has to fade out because even Jacob Buczarski does not know how to finish it! I would say that the album’s weakest moment is “Terra Requiem”, not because it is bad; I quite enjoyed the change of pace placed right in the middle of this record, but because the return of the blast beats and change of pace during its second half do not feel rewarding or well prepared.

So while I did enjoy this quite a bit, I would be hard pressed to call this excellent. With the exception of one great track, much of this record just runs together for me. Still, this is high quality atmospheric black metal that balances the extremity with the melodic very well.