Malist - Of Scorched Earth (2024)^{Release ID: 49727}

Malist is a solo project of Moscow's Ovfrost (Nick Kholodov) and isn't a project that I have followed too closely, but I did enjoy his 2020 album, To Mantle the Rising Sun, which was a well-done and enjoyable slice of melodic black metal. I have missed the two intervening albums, but here we are now with his latest, Of Scorched Earth. Whilst he is still ploughing the fertile melodic black metal furrow, there seems to be a greater influence from atmo-black that gives the tracks a more sweeping, grandiose quality. One trope in particular Ovfrost employs on multiple occasions here, is a calm, quieter core to tracks, with acoustic guitar strumming and a keyboard overlay, be it organ or piano, that acts as the still eye of the storm that contrasts with the heavy riffing and generally more frantic pace of the tracks either side of the still spot.

The songwriting indulges a fair bit of melodicism for a black metal album, yet I think it still retains enough of black metal's intensity and inherent savagery to satisfy all but the most demanding of BM kvltists. I suppose there are those who will bemoan it's clean production, pauses in intensity and melodic phrases, but there are more than enough passages where he lets himself off the leash, letting rip some frantic, black metal battery. For what it's worth, I would score this down a bit from the earlier To Mantle the Rising Sun, but it is nevertheless an interesting enough expression of melodic and atmospheric black metal, that has it's roots planted firmly here in the modern day and not back in the savagery of the 1990s.