This self-titled release from Veil Of Shadow is absolute reductionist raw black metal – black metal stripped down to its key ingredients, sans production, sans track titles, sans anything that isn’t absolutely essential.
This results in an album that is raw, primitive and immediate, but also manages to be strangely cerebral and impressionistic in its hypnotic repetition and hazy, distorted recording. This release has to have one of the most effective lo-fi productions out there, as repetitive power chord riffs and tremolo-picked high melodies drill their way into your consciousness through a misty distorted wash that renders them not so much heard as felt.
At times it’s as if the music is emanating from within your head, as if the lack of discernible details forces your brain to subconsciously fill in the gaps, and it is a truly immersive and borderline hypnotic experience. The lack of flourishes and extraneous details – of any distractions, really – means that this record is all about the purity of the melodies and the shifting chords, with screeching vocals and crashing drums just another layer of noise mixing in the distortion.
Veil Of Shadow reach their reductionist apex on the third track, where even those barely there drums and vocals are also removed, leaving a ghostly echoing guitar shredding its way through some haunting power chord progressions and showing how much can be done with so little.
Out on Fallow Field
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