Bleak, monochromatic, unforgiving… such are the words that describe Useless, a black metal band who truly understand the demented spirit of the genre. This is a band who look at all that is obscene and extreme and stifle it, creating their own void and forcing you to look – at times almost against your will – into the demented hellscape that is their new record, Absence Of Grace. There is a strange droning and powerful magic to this record: it's the sort of thing that made me fall in love with the genre so many years ago. Useless have refined something here that is, in a word-,- transcendent. Yet unlike many other records which seek to go beyond there is nothing outright beautiful about Useless. Rather we find ourselves having to suck on the unforgiving teat and look through our own mealy realities in order to pick apart what this band stands for. In a world where black metal is apparently getting wimpier and wimpier it is encouraging to see a band who stand strong.
Useless, while they certainly seem to understand black metal's aesthetic, occasionally feel like they could improve on the songwriting front. While I understand that drawn out hyperspeed passages are a key part of this genre, some of the songs on Absence Of Grace feel like they are simply too long. I'm not saying that they are bad per se, but simply that a 9-minute long track like "When Demons Awake," which features an extended bridge, might be come off better at two thirds the length. That being said, I love the stormy magic that the band is able to invoke, the blizzards of notes conjure up images of raging snowstorms. As I listen to this record in the middle of a summer downpour I can't help but to feel that my environment has come to reflect the music. Absence Of Grace shows us that Useless know how to use traditional black metal tropes to their fullest extent. The demented invocations of Absence Of Grace demonstrate that Useless are tapping into something greater.
What's clear to me is that even though Useless haven't quite gotten to where they need to be in terms of songwriting, the potential is there… and after all it is only their debut release. Useless are magical to me since they so clearly understand the fundamental concepts of what black metal should be and their execution is so tight. This is a band who revel in the internal misery that this kind of music was built on but who haven't quite reached the level they needed to in order to properly deliver with this kind of music. Perhaps my standards are so high for them since so much of the rest of the music is so good. Listening to Absence Of Grace you can feel their pain and you can understand the fundamental torment that fuels their sound. It leaves us worshiping the void and enslaved to the very absence of grace that fuels this record.
Overall: 7/10
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