There’s a cold remoteness that resonates throughout black metal’s complex and not always pleasant history. It’s often the music of isolation, and many of the genre’s most identifiable characteristics – high-pitched screams, brisk tempos and coarse recording qualities – possess an innate relationship with absence; of light, company, temperature, and in the most macabre of cases, hope.
These are sweeping generalisations, but given that Winterfylleth share their name with an old english word for October – a month typified by impending nightfall, morning frost and Halloween – this alignment with the stereotypically bleak milieu associated with black metal is an easy reach.
The Manchester band’s latest album, the ninth of their twenty year existence, is called ‘The Unyielding Season’. The titular season could be the month of their namesake, or it could be a reference to the grim epoch of existence humanity currently occupies. Either way, a cursory reading would conclude that Winterfylleth’s ‘The Unyielding Season’ is exactly what could be expected of a 21st century black metal album.
This is not always the case, though, as is apparent from the opening song’s stoic lyrics. Vocalist Chris Naughton declares: “Give strength to all, this lonely hour” as ‘Heroes of a Hundred Fields’ begins the record by traversing six-minutes of grandeur with more than a hint of pomp. There are a few moments like this, where Winterfylleth stray just enough from their genre’s core to engage the disinterested. That said, there’s likely little about ‘The Unyielding Season’ that will entice those who are not already fans of black metal.
That’s because, much like with the eight albums that precede ‘The Unyielding Season’, Winterfylleth remain both loyal to black metal’s stylistic mainstays and consummate in the execution of their performances. The band’s two-decade career is like that of a faithful co-worker, who’s head-down professionalism earns them less overt praise than is deserved, but a quiet and widespread approval nonetheless. It all means that gaining new fans may be challenging, but the already converted will remain thoroughly engaged.
None of this, however, should detract from the creativity and borderline scholarly smartness inherent to ‘The Unyielding Season’. When Sir Philip Sidney wrote ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia’ to entertain his younger sister, little did he know that his 16th century novel would be adapted quite so coherently five centuries later into ‘Echoes In The After’, a composition Winterfylleth were inspired to write following the infamous felling of a tree at Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall.
There’s instrumental creativity here too, like when Simon Lucas’ imperious drumming hijacks ‘A Hollow Existence’ to constitute a percussive riff above the swirling ribbons of guitars, collapsing as they do upon their overlapping selves into swathes of weighty ambience.
So enveloping is Winterfylleth’s noise wall that each song’s runtime frequently exceeds six minutes, as moments pass with a near meditative sensation. The expansiveness works given the morbidity of the title track, the despondency of ‘In Ashen Wake’, and the album’s general longing for hopefulness in times of despair. These songs trash and toil through the darkness, yearning for positive resolution.
It is for this reason that ‘Unspoken Elegy’ is a welcome diversion from the more challenging subject matter. What is effectively an interlude led by guitar and cello passages that are complementary to one another, the instrumental is something that is world-weary – heavy, in a different sense of the word.
Winterfylleth need to remain fluid in their instrumental choices too, as the comparatively gentle ‘Unspoken Elegy’ – in contrast to the riff-centric ‘Towards Elysium’ – ensures the latter’s crunchy guitars excite all the more vivaciously.
Even within this more groove-driven style, however, the use of atmosphere remains Winterfylleth’s greatest strength. Many of the standout moments here are the most instrumentally hedonistic, when epic sprawls of sound splinter into a blazing forest of chilling gales.
Which leads to the elephantine riff in the room, with Winterfylleth concluding ‘The Unyielding Season’ with a cover of Paradise Lost’s ‘Enchantment’. By eschewing atmosphere for stoner riffs, the band deliver on what is largely the album’s only major misstep, creating a conclusion that is unfortunately unwieldy and strangely unkempt.
Otherwise, Winterfylleth remain ever-consistent by demonstrating a well-balanced display of devotion to black metal’s transcendent qualities, and to showing a consistent interest in novel ideas, even if that interest is from afar. ‘The Unyielding Season’ is both stylistically on-brand and built upon unnerving lyrics, grandiose builds and the smallest scintilla of optimism for these unyielding times.
BEN WILLIAMS