The Nottingham anti-facist post-black metal five-piece may have been around since 2015 but haven’t rushed into the release of first full length Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry, describing the album as a vision of “many years in the making.” Having gone through a vocalist change in 2019, it’s been a difficult time for the band especially with the pandemic to boot, but the record is something they should all be immensely proud of.
With sprawling sections of instrumental broken up by sudden growls and spine-tingling screams, the record has everything you might expect from ‘a black metal album’ but with plenty more thrown in to fully animate it’s lyrical themes of addiction, systematic exploitation and mental turmoil. Having taking time to really hone their sound and figure out what they wanted, the band have developed an eerie, sinister mix of dreary soundscape shoegaze and raw black metal.
“This album feels very much like a band who know what they are doing and what they want”
Released on 30th July via Surviving Sounds, the five-track album opens up with ‘Qeres’, a seven-minute opus which really sets the tone for the rest of the record. The track starts deceptively quiet, as atmospheric arpeggio-style guitars drenched with echo create a palpable tension. Softly murmured spoken lyrics underneath paint a picture of dark society realities. As a listener, you just know this is going to build and break. When it does, the varying vocal techniques of Abi Vasquez are on full display and carry this track through various stages and spin-off-genres of metal. Vasquez is clearly an important and vital addition to the band, one which will stand them in good stead for the future. It’s a future they seem to have a steady grasp on too, as this album feels very much like a band who know what they are doing and what they want.
‘Coyotes’ is another one that opens softly. Quiet and delicate guitars lead the listener into a false sense of security. It’s almost lullaby-like in nature – hypnotic and comforting. Broken about a minute in with a hoarse, piercing scream, the melody line continues but this time with a much heavier accompaniment. The light and shade on this track is smoothly put together as the peaks and troughs take the listener on a thrilling ride that harrowingly showcases the horrors of the humanitarian crisis at the South American border.
“Uncompromising, devastating, poignant and beautiful”
The title track is a more of a traditional foray into black metal. It’s another long endeavour, but on an album with only five tracks that lasts thirty-seven minutes, that is to be expected. The shortest track on the album, coming in at 6.18, is ‘With Ashen Hands Around Our Throats’. Documenting the Grenfell Tower disaster and how landlords are trading adequate housing safety for capital, from the offset, it’s intense and full on, with very little let up throughout. It’s harrowing, conformational and precise in it’s anger.
Wrapping up with ‘Skeleton Queen’ the record comes to its climactic finish. With beautiful, soaring melodies buried underneath the relentless thwack of the drums all carried by Vasquez’s versatile vocal delivery, it’s a fitting end to a stunning record.
Uncompromising, devastating and beautiful, Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry is an intense listen that improves with age as your ears pick up more intricacies and delicate moments wrapped up in the jaw-breaking heaviness. It’s an impressive debut from a band who have clearly worked hard to get there and have some incredibly vital, yet difficult things to discuss. Underdark are ones to watch out for in the UKBM scene, a scene which has more recently fell in the shadow of our American counterparts. Perhaps the time is coming for us to rise again from the darkness with bands like Underdark at the helm.