UMUR
"The Great Southern Darkness" is the 4th full-length studio album by French black metal act Glorior Belli. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in September 2011. After releasing their 3rd full-length studio album "Meet Us at the Southern Sign (2009)", the band actually wrote material enough for a full album, but decided that the material they had written were too far removed from their Glorior Belli sound, to release it as the 4th Glorior Belli album. Instead they opted to create the 11 as in Adversaries project and release the material as "The Full Intrepid Experience of Light (2010)" under that monicker.
...having had their avant garde metal ideas released, they have returned to the more black metal oriented Glorior Belli sound on "The Great Southern Darkness". The music is by no means "traditional" sounding black metal though as the band incorporate quite a few southern tinged stoner metal and sludge metal ideas into their otherwise extreme and at times chaotic sounding black metal. The vocals are mostly harsh and raspy, but there are a couple of clean vocal sections on the album too. Most notably in the stoner rocking title track and in the closing track "Horns in My Patway". I´m reminded slightly of the most laidback psychadelic tinged tracks by Mastodon. While such an eclectic approach might seem disturbing to the most hardcore fans of more traditional sounding black metal, I think it´s very successful. The non black metal elements on the album makes the listening experience a more varied one and ultimately make "The Great Southern Darkness" a longer lasting and more interesting listen.
The fact that the album also features a really well sounding production, solid musicianship and strong songwriting only further enhance my opinion that "The Great Southern Darkness" is a great album fully deserving a 4 star (80%) rating.