Kriegsmaschine - Enemy of Man (2014)^{Release ID: 7697}

Drama and more specifically theatrics need not always come in the form of sweeping symphonic structures or other such over-the-top gestures of majesty and grandiosity. It is possible to express the raw emotion of your art form with a fair old amount of restraint. In fact, if you get your timings correct and the flow of your music perfected then your messaging kind of takes care of itself.

Polish black metal trio (at the time of this release anyways) are not entirely living up to the literal translation of their name (means “war machine” in German) in terms of their style of black metal. This is no Marduk clone, for example. Parallels instead can be drawn with Mgla (with whom they share a drummer and a guitarist/vocalist) or Aosoth as the six songs on this album cover a fair old bit of ground from the more melodic stylings of the former couple with the more aggressive tendencies of the latter. Despite not living up to the literal meaning of their name in terms of all out velocity of the music they do bring with them the horror of war with their largely grim and relentlessly repetitive salvos of tremolos that constantly pepper the skies around them as if in mid-firefight across the darkest of no-man’s lands.

A decidedly more modern take on black metal as opposed to being more second wave focused, Enemy of Man captures that ringing use of melody span into an ever-present dissonance that heightens the senses of the listener into near perpetual anxiety. Farewell to Grace is a real marauding track in this regard, constantly molesting the ears with its serpentine-like form. The drum patterns of Asceticism and Passion are tribal and ritualistic providing a great sense of drama all by themselves.

All this ever-growing darkness makes for a great listening experience with the summoning of theatre that I referenced at the start of my review sounding largely effortless. I cannot recall many modern black metal albums that I have taken to so quickly after my initial listens. This reminds me of Behemoth without all the bullshit ceremony (and a lot less death metal of course) and just allowed the intensity of the delivery drive everything. For an album full of seven and eight minutes plus tracks, Enemy of Man never gets dull or boring as you can revel in the repetition given that its importance is so integral to the success of the record.

The combination of Darkside’s varied and consistent drumming alongside M’s marauding guitar work is a lesson in vibrant component parts being able to be played side by side without one being at the expense of the other. The vocal contributions of M. and Destroyer round off an excellent overall experience making this 2014 release one of the real overlooked gems for me.