Upon graduating from At a Loss Recordings to Southern Lord for their third album, 2009's Chronomega, Bay Area sludge purveyors Black Cobra clearly felt that the larger stage dictated a corresponding growth in maturity. Chronomega deviated sharply from the origins of 2006's Bestial, itself a myopic yet effective riff factory pumping out the kind of accessible stoner hooks that go over like gangbusters in a live setting.
Chronomega began slowing things down a bit, introducing foreboding, atmospheric chords in the High on Fire vein, hinting at a larger canvas from which the duo of Jason Landrian and Rafael Martinez were culling their ideas from. The problem with that approach is that it came off as labored, too self-conscious; Landrian and Martinez no longer sounded like they were enjoying themselves. And though, on paper, the songs were objectively well crafted, the pacing found itself locked into a stagnant mid-tempo groove… there just wasn't enough variety, though the brisk 38 minute running time mitigated this flaw somewhat.
Unsurprisingly, then, Invernal finds Landrian/Martinez more at home in their own shoes. At eight tracks and 39 minutes, the album demonstrates a re-upped commitment to brevity – the better to avoid overstaying the band's welcome – yet also shows a better mastery of velocity. "Avalanche" fires things off with double kick drums and a meaty riff out of the late era Sepultura songbook, Landrian's clean vocals a counterpart to the thickened sludge of the instrumentation.
"Somnae Tenebrae" follows, also a rousing, percussion enforced anthem; between these first two songs one could easily get the impression that Black Cobra had turned over a new leaf altogether, abandoning their doom predilections altogether for pure, uptempo jam band sludge, but then "Corrosion Fields" comes along and we begin to see how Invernal fits in as a logical progression of Chronomega.
The bulk of the album beginning with "Corrosion Fields" settles down into a slower, doom inflected pace in the High on Fire mold, each of the remaining five tracks unfolding in the five- to six-minute range, each a lumbering progression built around one single riff with Landrian falling back on his traditional shouted vocals. There's not a dud amongst them, but by sequencing all of the mid-paced tunes in consecutive order in the middle bulk of the album Black Cobra inadvertently put a dent in the repeat listening value of Invernal.
The final song, "Obliteration", is quite possibly the fastest in the band's catalog, an ostensible grind scorcher mired in a tar pit and fighting its way through the thick morass, and frankly the album might have been broken up a little better if this song was inserted in the middle somewhere. Likewise, if the two brisk opening tracks were spread out a little more amongst the mid-tempo offerings Invernal as a whole would present itself as a far more diverse effort.
As it is, this is a flaw in presentation only; the songwriting itself finds Black Cobra at the peak of their abilities, and there isn't a false note anywhere to be found on Invernal's 39 minutes. Any of these songs will be a welcome addition to the band's concert repertoire, which is where Landrian and Martinez shine best anyway.
8 out of 10
Invernal is out Tuesday on Southern Lord.
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