9

Textures of Black

Have you ever looked at a Jackson Pollock painting? Taking for example 'Convergence', it is a riot of colour and chaos, dark and foreboding, unhindered by the confines of its canvas, it seems to have a life outside of the frame and you can spend an absorbing five minutes looking at it, then you move on and only remember random splashes of primary colours.
Now imagine that I have placed ten such pieces of art in a room and you must spend at least five minutes looking at each in turn, after the fifth one you will have spent twenty five minutes being bombarded by colours and chaos and will be thinking it's all a load of Pollocks. There is only so much extreme you can take in at one sitting before its power wanes and familiarity dulls its edge.

Black metal suffers from this very problem, with its soul crushing guitars and machine like speed drumming, voiced over with a tortured vocal even a mother couldn't love, it starts out by pushing you down the stairs and giving you a kicking but after five songs of nonstop attack its edge starts to blunt and you are left with a fast noise that has lost its appeal.

Pantheon I were headed down this very track with three songs that had Black metal written through them like a stick of black rock, then, just when I was waiting for speed noise number four on comes 'Coming to an end' starting off like an intro to a laid back Opeth song it moves into fast but melancholy waters and is soon joined by the growls of frontman Andrč Kvebek. It is a slower more textured offering than has gone before and when Andrč suddenly sings with an intriguing clear voice it lifts the song so far above the earlier material it wakes you up. It's like finding a Dali painting in the middle of the Pollocks, so refreshing and so unexpected that you start to take notice again.

After this watershed moment the album offers up a different feeling to what has come before with slower, better written yet no less black tracks, they have better pacing and texture, showing a more thoughtful and intelligent mind. I would encourage the band to follow this direction if they want to break out of the underground. If they don't then that's fine too just keep doing what you're doing.

This is a solid Black metal offering with a few hints that Pantheon I could be something more without sacrificing their ideals.