Time Signature
O espertar do Xerión...
Genre: Galician black metal
This album offers black metal which has plenty of dark atmosphere to it and contains lots of typical black metal elements, but the music on this release is predominantly very melodic. This is partially because Xerión infuse Galician folk music into their brand of black metal, and thus their style inherits Galician folk melodies. But it also seems that there are plenty of melodies which are not necessarily of Galician origin - in any case there are many simple, but very nice guitar melodies on this album.
There are many chaotic blastbeat-based parts on this album, but the music is predominantly in a heavy to midtempo pace (sometimes reminding me of The Gathering's "Mandylion"), and there are also folk instruments and keyboards are an integrated part of the Xerión sound, too.
An interesting dimension is the lyrics, which are about Galician and Iberian folklore, and delivered - with generic black metal vocals - in the Galician language (a minority language spoken in the Galicia region in Spain, which has more in common with Portuguese than with Spanish). This, of course, adds a sense of Galician authenticity to Xerión's music.
Recommended to those who are interested in black metal with infusions from local folk music traditions.