Great Old Ones, The - Kadath (2025)^{Release ID: 57250}

I have been a big fan of the Lovecraft-obsessed Frenchmen since the release of their sophomore, Tekeli-li, back in 2014. They have always imbued their atmospheric black metal with post-metal and even atmo-sludge elements to add an additional emotional redolence to their tales of eldritch horror. Whilst this latest follows a similar template, the band are also moving in a generally more progressive direction, as exemplified by the ten-minute opener, "Me, the Dreamer" and even more pertinently by the lengthy instrumental "Leng". "Me, the Dreamer" begins in TGOO's recognisably dense atmospheric black metal style, but at midpoint it takes an even more menacing turn, introducing an air of dissonance that sees it covering similar territory to that heard recently on Ulcerate's "Cutting the Throat of God", before making a more triumphal-sounding procession to song's end. The fifteen minutes of "Leng" exhibits even more musical turns, being an epic piece that expresses the faded grandeur and looming menace of long-forgotten and abandoned alien cityscapes better than any amount of words could. This track in particular, without it's reliance on the human voice, reveals how adept the band are becoming at writing metal that can convey atmosphere and mood by instrumentation alone and is a seminal piece for the band. The three guitarists weave in and out of each other with wistful and lighter motifs alongside hulking and towering, darker riffs making this a beautifully constructed and expressive instrumental.

Not only on those two tracks, but throughout it's hour-long runtime, Kadath sounds more ambitious than the band's previous material and feels like a band stretching their wings, having grown more confident in their technical abilities and reaching for more tools to utilise in their quest to produce music that fully conveys the dark and ominous concepts of the Cthulhu Mythos around which they base their ethos. They have always produced epic-sounding black metal, but their new-found confidence in their ability to expand their sound has taken this to a new level, with increasingly light and dark shades contrasting each other to deepen the otherworldly atmospherics. This isn't by any means a sea-change in the frenchmen's sound, but rather an evolution in the way they express themselves, I guess in a similar way that Enslaved successfully managed on their releases during the 2000s. Like the Norwegians TGOO are unafraid to sometimes take a slightly more melodic route with several of their riffs proving to be decidedly hooky, the opening riff of "Under the Sign of Koth" for example, being a particular foot-tapper.

All this has not come at the expense of any inate heaviness, it must be pointed out. Well, maybe a little, but I think that the more reflective moments often serve to throw the heavier sections into even sharper relief and render them consequently more effective. Look, Kadath is not exactly the kind of album you would put on to work out some aggression or for a good headbanging session, but that doesn't mean that it can't shake the foundations occasionally and it possesses enough sonic gut-punches to appeal to any number of discerning metalheads. But that ultimately isn't the aim of the album, it is for reflection and contemplation of the unknown corners of the human psyche and the barely concealed horrors lurking therein, to which end it is reasonably successful, I would suggest.