Bastard Sapling – Dragged From Our Restless Trance (Forcefield Records)
After a few decades’ worth of arguing about what can or cannot be deemed authentic, black metal seems to be reaching the point of moving past its classicist tendencies, for better or worse. Though there are still certain hindsight-inclined factions that are perfectly happy to take to the message boards to do battle with anything varying from the tried and true, it seems many of the most widely heralded bands of late have been the ones to tamper with the formula – whether that’s the Pink Floyd aspirations of Enslaved or Nachtmystium, the shoegazer inclinations of Amesouers or Deafheaven, or the Godflesh-style pummeling of recent Blut Aus Nord.
Bastard Sapling – Dragged From Our Restless Trance (Forcefield Records)
After a few decades’ worth of arguing about what can or cannot be deemed authentic, black metal seems to be reaching the point of moving past its classicist tendencies, for better or worse. Though there are still certain hindsight-inclined factions that are perfectly happy to take to the message boards to do battle with anything varying from the tried and true, it seems many of the most widely heralded bands of late have been the ones to tamper with the formula – whether that’s the Pink Floyd aspirations of Enslaved or Nachtmystium, the shoegazer inclinations of Amesouers or Deafheaven, or the Godflesh-style pummeling of recent Blut Aus Nord. And even when these forumla tamperings don’t work, It can at least be conceptually interesting to consider how far one can stray from genre tropes (and how many outside signifiers one can incorporate) without stepping outside of the style itself. But novelty ought not be conflated with quality and there’s something to be said for an essentialist aesthetic when executed well. The reason that old black metal is still compelling is because it had a propulsive force and a distinct atmospheric quality, and while most bands attempting too literal a recreation of that tend to fall flat, there are those who can pull it off so well that it puts most other comparable bands to shame, whether or not they’re trying to re-invent any wheels.
Bastard Sapling is exactly that sort of band. Anybody who’s listened to any black metal at all will likely be familiar with the sort of territory to which they’ve laid claim. It’s pretty easy to be reductionist about what they do – a solid helping of early Darkthrone, more than a touch of the first two Immortal albums, an occasional hint of Weakling’s melodic tendencies – but that really doesn’t do the album justice. Rather than act as a cheap knockoff of their easily-imitable but rarely-paralleled forebears, they learned the hard lessons – that it’s not about any individual riffs or self-consciously evil posturing, but rather about the holistic presentation. Bastard Sapling separates themselves from the black metal masses through their ability to write solid songs, heavy on dynamics and fluidity, memorable because of the eloquence of their composition rather than any sort of cheap trick.
However, this isn’t to say the album lacks any stylistic left turns. Windhand singer Dorthia Cottrell contributes some haunting melodic vocals to the beginning of “Cold Winds Howled Across The Desolation,” the woozy guitar that opens “Beyond The Void Of Life” sounds like Slint on a serious Ketamine binge, and the vocals towards the end of “The Apex Of Suffering” trade in the typical black metal shriek for a more Neurosis-y bellow. These are subtle adornments, integrated well enough that they help support the album’s core strengths rather than distracting from them. But despite these occasional detours, Bastard Sapling are traditional enough that trying to put into words why their music is meaningful is a difficult proposition. Wild variants and sharp deviations are easy to qualify, but solid and unpretentious offerings rarely are.
Ultimately, this is why Bastard Sapling are notable. They’re a reminder that the sort of music that was made best in Scandinavia in the decade leading up to ’93 or so may seem like it’s been done to death, but still can provide a fecund source of inspiration for those who know how to approach it. Characterized by both a sense of reverence and a subtly experimental spirit, Dragged From Our Restless Trance could serve as a corrective example for anyone who thinks the surest path to quality black metal is to either offer nth-generation carbon copies of Mayhem demos or to adorn the music with so many window dressings as to render it all but unrecognizable. It’s regrettably uncommon to find a black metal band possessing the graceful power as Bastard Sapling, but for this reason, their album is easily the best in the genre that I’ve heard this year.
