Man, Russia must be a dark, grim and depressing place to live, if the high quality of miserable black metal that snakes its way out of the country is anything to go by. Utburd, a one man bleak atmospheric black metal project, has released ‘The Horrors Untold’ earlier this year through Satanath Records, and it is a mesmerising plunge into the darkest parts of the great, grim north.
Opener ‘Rise of Dagon’ begins with glacial guitar that steadily bleeds into a weeping ooze of traditional black metal. ‘The Horrors Untold’ has a lot more narrative running through it than a lot of depressive/atmospheric black metal, like the creepy ‘Mystery of Joseph Karven’ or the coldness of ‘Death from Mount Tempest’. It isn’t just waves of riffing without structure, it manouevres deftly between scowling second wave and a grasp of the atonal, the off kilter. The title track is a looming beast of gloom and bleak darkness, swamped in ethereal atmospherics but with a satisfying heft to it.
Utburd’s black metal is definitely depressive and atmospheric but it doesn’t fall into the tedious, monotonous traps that many of this genre can. There is plenty of variety, cool riffing and a plethora of melancholic melody lines to get lost in. ‘He, Who Paints in Red’ is the best example from a record that shimmers with glacial fury.
https://www.facebook.com/RussianUtburd/
https://vk.com/utburd_official
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat190-utburd-the-horrors-untold-2018
The Killchain 