1349 - Revelations of the Black Flame (Album Review)

Written by Baazgor

1349 – Revelations of the Black Flame

Candlelight

Released – 05/25/2009

The One Sentence Review: An unseen, sharp turn of direction that flips the band's boat and will surely leave some old and new fans in the water.

Tracklisting:

1 – Invocation

2 – Serpentine Sibilance

3 – Horns

4 – Maggot Fetus…Teeth like Thorns

5 - Misanthropy

6 – Uncreation

7 – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd cover)

8 – Solitude

9 – At the Gate…

A buddy of mine and a fellow member of this site had tipped me off that 1349 had just released a new album and that it was a little different from previous releases. After listening to ‘Revelations of the Black Flame’, it’s not the type of album you sit on the fence with. This new release from 1349 is marginally different from anything they have put out, and is a sharp departure from their common straight-forward fast black metal and crosses into a void that only a few bands have explored.

The trigger in this scenario isn’t particularly clear, you can’t really tell if this is some type of one off experiment, a change in the bands direction or some type of ‘maturing’ of the musicians and the band itself. ‘Revelations of the Black Flame’ leaves a great deal of loose ends and radiates this negative mystique that keeps you far enough away from it’s intent that those loose ends can never be secured. This is the type of album that you gauge as a whole and not as individuals songs. The individual songs on ‘Revelations of the Black Flame’ are like chapters in a book whereas you can’t make sense of a book when the chapters are out of place, or some are missing, so this is definitely something you have to listen all the way through to enjoy it.

Structurally, the album is half instrumental (ambient/noise) and half actual music with most of the core songs being flanked by the instrumentals. The instrumentals are cryptic, mostly white washed distortion, untraceable passages of noise with the occasional instrument that comes bubbling up out of the nothing. The core songs themselves are all different from one another, progressive yet wandering, like ghosts that aimlessly roam around an abandoned house. Songs such as ‘Maggot Fetus…Teeth Like Thorns’ are a little more straight forward, with a lead power riff, some downpicking fury and a steady bass-snare-bass beat that is reminiscent of some of the ‘black and roll’ tendencies that are starting to become more and more abundant.. Songs like ‘Serpentine Sibilance’ and ‘Uncreation’ are demonstrations of the new found progressive writing nature, combining the fast with the slow and freeform, building to a peak and washing away.

The production is fitting for the music, a wide sound that circulates all of the bizarre background workings of the album and sonically throws it about a sea of low end fuzz and white noise. There is enough clarity to allow everything through to a point where it is heard, even when it is a full fledged, noisy meltdown.

‘Revelations of the Black Flame’ is a good effort but will be hard swallow for a lot of people due to it’s sheer inaccessibleness, it’s departure from it’s common practice and its harsh, minimal message. This was probably one of the more original albums but that doesn’t always equate into something good. There has already been a huge backlash from 1349 fanbase that wasn’t to keen on this huge change of direction, and a lot of metal fans who had never heard of 1349 didn’t really find much of worm on the hook here to swallow. Having a solid knowledge of the band’s previous works might come in handy here, but quite frankly, this is something that’s a little too remote to really get attached to. It’s a pretty good listen, but it will leave you hungering for more substance.

Final Score: 6/10

Written by Baazgor (Andrew Krause) from Metaltome.com, May 16^th, 2009

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