Servile Sect -- STRATOSPHERIC PASSENGER [Sounds of Battle]

Now this is a surprise -- a black metal album that's not immediately recognizable as a black metal album. Going by the cover (red-tinted photos of Mars on the outside, more such photos plus the rings of Saturn and a map of the solar system on the inside) and the initial sound, one could easily mistake this for a droning experimental album... at least until the vocals come in, at which point the truth becomes evident. The album's overall sound combines dark, noise-laden drone with black metal minimalism and hellish shrieking; musically, it bears very little resemblance to what most people would consider black metal, but aesthetically and emotionally, it's far more of a black metal album than a merely experimental one. The drones are wavering, throbbing exercises in harmonic resonance and blackened tone, cold and near-ambient cyclones of noise and chromatic static that abandon any pretense of traditional structure involving chord progressions in favor of a malevolent hovering ambience. It's a bleak, oppressive sound made only more horrifying by the pained shrieking buried beneath harmonic noise. This is an extremely imaginative bridge between the experimental and metal worlds, and one that works really well as a bleak black metal album. People who think black metal has no way to evolve past its current accepted boundaries should listen to this.