All the Cold - Heritage

Band: All the Cold

Album: Heritage

Genre:  Post-Metal (listed as progressive atmospheric rock)

Country: Russia

Year: 2013 

Link

Listening to the new “All the Cold” album is like listening to a more ambient version of Alcest with more exploratory, jazzy rhythms reminiscent of recent words by Nokturnal Mortum and Drudkh, and less of Alcest’s dreamy or light quality. The track Zhu Zin exemplifies this mix of heavy and "mystical" qualities. Later electronic/synth effects might turn metal-fans off. It is “heavier” so to speak, but also filled with random riff sequences much more reminiscent of rock that bypass the entire “post-metal”/gaze concept. The data in the download describes it as “progressive atmospheric rock”. It still has its metal influence, as shown by how heavy it is, but it is light enough to move on a misty, progressive-rock uncertainty. It is melancholic, yet in the way that “Моєї мрії острови” was in Nokturnal Mortum’s Voices of Steel. Some parts event sound like the Death Note OST.

It certainly is a move away from their previous work One Year of Cold, which I reviewed about a week ago. I was surprised by how great the influence of progressive rock is, which usually is avoided by metal/post-metal BUT works out alright in this album, only adding to its sort of mysticism and flow.

The names, perhaps as implied by the title, are also not the familiar black-metal titles we are used to. Something echoes of an Arabian or Steppes mysticism in this work, like something of astronomy or minaret-towers quiet somewhere east of the Balkans, maybe east, maybe south.

Sometimes I think I’m listening to a funky electro-techno-nightcore-trance when I’m listening to this album. It isn’t bad, but it certainly is shocking. It isn’t disharmonic, but it’s not really black metal anymore. None of the black metal ambience is left from the previous album. I would say there is nothing similar about them.

Rated 7/10 for post-black metal/shoe-gaze for a unique mix of post-metal elements and electronic music. I can't really name another album like it.