Kromlech – In Absentia Review

As soon the listener immediately presses that play button, one is welcome to the open intro track, Nihilistic Pessimism In a Blistered Dream. The listener is welcomed to a distorted opening of the guitar and deep-dark vocals – alluring the listener into the unknown darkness of two minutes.

Following suit with the second track Misanthrope Within The Umbra and the seven remaining tracks.
As one continues their dark and nightmarish journey, one discovers this is music that was born out of the depths of the unknown. Each song is like flicking through different pages of Umbra’s mind and his personal experiences in life dealing with grief, mental illness, and other topics, which are all penned within the music/songs.

At the same time, one will find and encounter each track is different, capturing various moments and expressions within the pieces, such as multiple moods, tempos, sounds, and atmospheres. This is all done by creating a black metal that’s drenched in pure darkest and demonic possession (at times be sorrowful and beautiful). With an appreciation for the mid to late 80s underground extreme metal scene and crossing various black metal sub-genres and various genres such as; (the listener will encounter) atmospheric black metal, raw black metal, depressive black metal, (well as) hardcore punk, grindcore, shoegaze, noise (sounds and voice samples) and dark ambient.

At times, I feel like the motions and expressions of Umbra’s music are also channelled via the guitar. These motions are expressed through the guitar, not his voice (there are moments of hearing and picturing the screen of the film The Crow where Brandon Lee is on a rooftop and jamming away on the guitar -that’s the feel and atmosphere I get) – the guitar is his voice.

Kromlech‘s devilmanship is top-notch, which consists of an atmosphere of distorted progressive passage with a sound that’s raw and ugly. With some ambient/noise, sounds, and sample sections taking over the surge of raw and progressing and jumping back to the aggressive.

The album comes to an end with the last song, Swallowed By Abyssal Shadows. We want to give a shoutout to Kromlech for letting us review his album, In Absentia. Now, we’re going to wrap it up by talking about the final three sins and concluding the review.