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LOSS OF SELF – Twelve Minutes

In Twelve Minutes, Loss Of Self has added itself to the canon of an emerging genre: Optimistic Black Metal.  Smearing gauzy, psychedelic guitars over hyperactive drums and reverbed snarls, the album stands as a near antithesis of most prevailing black metal trends, seeking the light instead of darkness.

One could be forgiven for thinking it a little like current darlings Deafheaven, though these Australians at least date back to a 2012 demo EP, whose 3 tracks are remastered here, making up the last of 9 tracks.  The trio certainly shares traits with that San Francisco group’s most recent album, though with more of an ear for concision, reflected in the thirty-minute runtime for the whole thing.  In this sense, what LoS has done is combined the old, thrash-influenced first- and second-wave of bm with its more recent, post-rock-indebted mutations.

Take a song like opener “Isolt:” a warm, clanging guitar wraps around mutating drums and far-off voices belt into the ether.  Shoegaze stitched together by a necro seamstress.  “Paradise Overgrown” registers as a more frigid star, but even within the feedback the

group inserts an industrial hi-hat beat, nigh danceable in its insistence.  Syncopation and clear vocals rule the day on the title track.

Released on experimental San Francisco label The Flenser, home of bands like Bosse-de-Nage, Twelve Minutes makes sense.  Unlike other bands trying out this increasingly-popular style, LoS never feel as if they’re playing a “combine two genres” game of smashing post-rock and bm together.  Chaos still frequently reigns, even if there’s more stargazing than spleen-venting going on.  The album isn’t perfect or revelatory, but on highlight “There Must Be Great Wisdom with Great Death,” all the pieces fit together, the melody, the moaning, the psychedelic overdubs, into something that just makes sense.  It’s a song free from convention; hopefully on future records LoS can harness that into something new and exciting.