Discussing whether or not music rings trve, kvlt or hipster seems to dominate conversations within the circles of metal dorkdom, and absolutely no one has an answer. You can’t speak to true black metal unless you have burned down a church or maybe stabbed your guitarist, so until then, we can skip that part of the discussion when it comes to Black Anvil. They get a ton of shit thrown at them for the ways they mix up certain portions of the genre with their past hardcore influences, but in the end they have produced some of the most forward leaning extreme music in the last few years.
Admittedly I am not one to judge the merits of their black metal purity, but when Time Insults the Mind came across my ears I was hooked on this band. Taking some of the best parts of thrash, hardcore and most definitely black metal, Black Anvil carved a niche into a world of metal that has no more room for genre splitting. We are growing past the point of classification, and so much of that has to do with bands like this that aggressively do what they do and don’t outwardly care what people think.
This worked to their advantage in the past, and this time around with Hail Death, coming four years after their last album, Black Anvil grew into a beast that will not be slayed. This record is expansive, incorporating the things that made fans fall in love with them, but providing a three dimensional diorama of sound that is both simple, but has depth of feel with its gang vocals, tremolo picking and a mixture of tempos regulated by intense drumming, blast beat, d-beat… it hits a little bit of everything.
Some would consider this a hodgepodge of styles that are symptomatic of a band that can’t seem to find their feet, yet it listens like the most cohesive thing Black Anvil ever accomplished. Where these pieces were just that – parts assembled in an interesting way – Hail Death musically unites all the concepts they have worked on their entire lives. Moments of slow deliberate heavy riffs open songs up into speedy jams with reserved interludes that give pause before ripping your face off.
I would suggest you listen to this whole album, however, don’t just hit one or two on the interwebs. I noticed that taking songs individually doesn’t do the flow of the record justice, they feel like pieces of a whole, they stand alone in their own respect, but putting them in the context of the surrounding seems to play off of each of other in a way that creates a mood, an ebb and flow of riffage, slow and grinding, fast paced and ruthless, one of the best records of the year.
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