Shadow Of The Destroyer – Shadow Of The Destroyer (Inherent Records)
Underneath the credits for recording, mastering, and artwork, the bottom of the insert that accompanies Shadow Of The Destroyer’s self-titled album bears the phrase “pure Appalachian black metal,” a statement of purpose and self-identification that could easily color any conceptions of what the band attempts.
Shadow Of The Destroyer – Shadow Of The Destroyer (Inherent Records)
Underneath the credits for recording, mastering, and artwork, the bottom of the insert that accompanies Shadow Of The Destroyer’s self-titled album bears the phrase “pure Appalachian black metal,” a statement of purpose and self-identification that could easily color any conceptions of what the band attempts. The statement proves as true as it does untrue. It’s accurate in the sense that the album holds to a singular purpose, an unwavering aesthetic and execution. However, it’s less so, given that the band tweaks some of the normative elements within black metal to enough of an extent that a determination of its purity might not be so easily attained unless we are to consider Appalachian black metal as a sub-subgenre, distinct enough from its parent subgenre that it comes complete with its own concepts, practices, and ideas of what constitutes an undiluted version thereof. Viewed in this light, purity may ultimately be beside the point of what the band is attempting with their work.
While Shadow Of The Destroyer write music that is undoubtedly shrouded in the imagery and practices of black metal, their album is a compelling listen due to the ways they subvert expectation of what exactly work operating in the black metal vein should entail. There are obvious signifiers – occasional blastbeats, tremolo-picked guitar passages – that dictate an overall stylistic allegiance, but at the same time the production emphasizes a low-end heft that few black metal bands possess. The songs’ galloping, riffy heaviness is markedly distinct from those who might consider themselves their contemporaries, and the singer’s throaty shout sounds far closer to Todd Burdette than Per Ohlin.
These variations from a larger genre body are hardly points of criticism, however. The quasi-crust heaviness lends the music a worldliness and a visceral aggression that often comes up lacking in bands whose sole purpose is attempting to out-evil each other, and the production lends the music a gloomy atmosphere that compliments the lyrics’ conceptual elements. Though no shortage of apocalyptic imagery presents itself, the degree of engagement with social ills prevents the songs from falling into cheap nihilism, instead focusing ire on profiteering warmongers and the extent to which corporate greed rends asunder the natural world. Though lines like “In darkness we approach the end of life as we know it / Through veiled eyes, oblivious to the horrors that will lead to dark days” may sound shot through with defeatism, the intent seems to be the opposite. Rather than remaining mired in hopelessness, the lyrical portents issue the sort of dire warning that only tends to be dealt out when the one offering the assessment believes there might be a chance, however remote, of some sort of end result other than that present in his or her darkest imaginings.
Shadow Of The Destroyer prove themselves worth consideration through music devoid of many of the extraneous elements that have come to factor into much recent black metal. Lacking stage makeup, acoustic interludes, transcendental manifestos, Pitchfork coverage, intentionally provocative fascist imagery, shoegaze crossover, keyboards, or any of the other assorted window dressing that tends to adorn other bands’ output while distracting from the core of their output, Shadow Of The Destroyer have created an album that propels itself under the sheer weight of its intensity and engagement with the world around it. It may or may not be the distilled essence of the style that they claim it to be, but the advantage is certainly theirs if the latter option holds more weight.
