ACOLYTE

It seems Manchester's a fertile ground for spawning atypical black metal acts. First there was Winterfylleth and now there's Acolyte. Like Winterfylleth, Acolyte eschew the tired old idioms associated with the genre's image so forget corpse paint, spiked wrist bands etc. and bring on the jeans and t-shirts. This is purely about the music and 'Alta', their debut album, is as atypically black metal as their image and re-introduces a progressive element in an all too often self-imitative subgenre that was once lauded for its innovative streak. Of course, it could be argued that Acolyte are not black metal at all but more of an inventive metal band with some blackened elements - it all depends how they're marketed and how they want to be perceived I guess, although a degree of alignment with the black metal scene is inevitable as there are enough tenets of said subgenre to warrant such. For starters, the vocals are instantly discernible as black metal in their snarled, throaty delivery. There are a ton of blackened sonics as well, through a bombardment of discordant melodies. However, Acolyte's varied compositional style also has a strong dose of trad-metal grooves which brings to mind, over certain passages, the black 'n' roll aesthetic of Vreid. And the opposing characteristics in Acolyte's sound - dissonance and consonance; cacophony and euphony; heavy and mellow - are all well balanced within the compositions and the progression between each of these dynamics has a natural flow. As such, the aural contiguity of the songs' disparate parts makes 'Alta' a fairly accessible record, despite its stylistic divergences. There's not a feeling they've simply thrown a whole load of ideas into the mix just for the sake of musical disparity, rather everything has its place within the well thought out compositions. The songwriting quality does drift at times, though, so the melodies and general instrumentations are perhaps not as inventive as they could be. Overall, however, this is a mightily fine debut.

LABEL:

FORMAT:

Mordgrimm

Album

ALTA

Review by Mark Holmes

RUNNING TIME:

57:01

RELEASE DATE:

6th May 2013

TRACK LISTING

1) Alta
2) Charybdis
3) Leng
4) The Nameless Expanse
5) Sunrise
6) Formidine
7) Vultures
8) The Ashenground
9) Epistle

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

UK

"...as atypically black metal as their image and re-introduces a progressive element in an all too often self-imitative subgenre that was once lauded for its innovative streak."