Category: Audio Published on Thursday, 26 February 2009 00:00 Written by Graham Mills Hits: 660
10 (From metalireland.com) To someone like myself who must be among a handful of people on the planet who actually like his music, the pleasure felt in finally seeing the new album from Benighted Leams, aka Alex Kurtagic, is almost incommunicable. Readers well versed in the annals of mail order will doubtless raise an eyebrow: ah yes, you can be heard surmising, Supernal hypes its latest release, and MetalIreland fawns like an obsequious mut. Well not a jot of it. This album, the product of a singular vision and that singular sound, is the stab against all the crap that pollutes what purports to be undeground metal in 2004, the stab against what you think is dark, what you think represents the bona fide; and more's the pity that noone will probably even buy it. Three albums down the line, Benighted Leams have consolidated everything that made them so essential in the first place into one brilliantly evocative whole. Redolent of everything sylvanian, obscure and tenebrous, those who already know where to look need merely nod: this is the one. Benighted Leams' last two albums, the essential "Caliginous Romantic Myth" and the slightly lesser "Astral Tenebrion" exist as monuments to what is necessarily a singularly recondite vision of underground metal. If you didnt get it then, you wont get it now, as thankfully little has changed, save for the better. Having seeminly shed his cosmological bent, Alex has returned to the cavernous and crepuscular sounds that made the first cd such an exclusive joy. Guitars utterly saturated with reverb meld with subtle synths, sub-bass undertones and barely perceptible vocals to deliver an atmosphere of dank and sodden otherness. The drum machine is still there and still imperfect, but somehow entirely appropriate; but the thing about Benighted Leams is really that it's a guitar driven project, with the arpeggios and chromatic approach leading everything else anyway. This time, the vibe has gotten so much darker and personal. The guitar lines that define these songs now show a use of harmony that increases the unsettling and darker side, as opposed to previous efforts wherein a vaguely uplifting air was sometimes discernable. Not now. These riffs are the essence of disquiet, and dark as sin. Supernal itself has mooted comparisons to Bethlehem, and while there are of course obvious points of reference - the guitar attack, the permanent focus on the lead melody - it really isn't as clear cut as that. Mercifully the clean vocals that blighted previous efforts are now gone, and indeed the vocals take a lesser role now than ever. As always, the beauty of Benighted Leams' capacity for creating that essential dark atmosphere manifests itself in the cavernous production values and emotive guitar work. This album may not benefit from the hand drawn art and mediaeval focus that the first enjoyed, what with its lyrics in Chaucerian English and the accompanying bewitching illustration, but as always with this musical singularity, it really is a case of the music doing the talking. Supernal as an enterprise, and Alex's ideological vision over the years, has been an interesting develpment to observe. I couldn't therefore let this review go without the cynic in me noting the track "Orphny of Arain Blood" perhaps pandering to the NS following that Supernal seems to have been at great pains to espouse in recent times; this is indeed a strange shift from the spacey and alien concept that was apparent not four years ago. The music however renders criticism redundant. Just as a few of us hoped it would, "Ferly Centesms" delivers more of what will make Benighted Leams' new album so essential to fans of Nordvargr, Forgotten Tomb, Leviathan and Xasthur; that innate ability to conjure the obscure, the impenetrable, the esoteric and the occult, and to transport the listener to different times and different worlds. This album has also gained the fiercely coveted yet rarely granted Earl Grey award; an accolade siezed only by those albums of shadowy, sunless and malignant hue, whose destiny it is to accompany the furrowed brow of their owners, contemplative acolytes that they are, through these longing nights of solitude and misanthropy, whose only accompaniment 'gainst the cold be a steaming cup of the famed herbal infusion. Dont bother buying at once; leave it to those who know what theyre talking about. 5 / 5 -Ciaran Tracey ::: 11/10/04