Lately, black metal has seemingly been all about the brooding and the introspecting, which can be enjoyable but generally tends to strip the brutal genre of its typically raw and primal qualities. Exquisite Ending channel this brooding misanthropy into an aggressive fury, making black metal worthy of both head-banging and self-examination on their latest record, The Rite of Misanthropism.
Rite doesn't fall into either the experimental or the lo-fi "throwback" styles black metal. If anything, the band sound more like Dark Funeral in the way they aggressively and brutally pound through all their songs, but still keep things a little bit catchy. On "Banishment of Nobel Coercion," for example, the vocal refrain and chorus can be discerned, but the music still manages to beat you over the head and make you ponder the darkness of Satan and the human mind, all while banging your head.
Exquisite Ending are filling a serious gap in black metal that needs to be attended to. Because they are more accessible than esoteric, and more angry and dark than old school, they stand out in the scene in a really interesting way. The Rite of Misanthropism is enough to warrant following this band, if only to see where they'll go from here.
(Hibernacula Records)Rite doesn't fall into either the experimental or the lo-fi "throwback" styles black metal. If anything, the band sound more like Dark Funeral in the way they aggressively and brutally pound through all their songs, but still keep things a little bit catchy. On "Banishment of Nobel Coercion," for example, the vocal refrain and chorus can be discerned, but the music still manages to beat you over the head and make you ponder the darkness of Satan and the human mind, all while banging your head.
Exquisite Ending are filling a serious gap in black metal that needs to be attended to. Because they are more accessible than esoteric, and more angry and dark than old school, they stand out in the scene in a really interesting way. The Rite of Misanthropism is enough to warrant following this band, if only to see where they'll go from here.