ARCHIVIST — Archivist (review)

ARCHIVIST — Archivist album cover Album · 2015 · Atmospheric Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
UMUR
"Archivist" is the self-titled debut full-length studio album by multinational post black metal act Archivist. The album was independently released in June 2015. Archivist features members from Austria, England, and Germany. Some of the members are associated with artists like Anopheli, Thurm, and Light Bearer. "Archivist" is a concept album about the last survivor on earth flying away into space in an escape pod.

The material on the 8 track, 65:03 minutes long album is atmospheric/post black metal, which is rather bleak, but not devoid of glimpses of light. Overall the dark and melancholic atmosphere of the album suits the apocalyptic extinction theme of the lyrics well though. The tracks are typically slow building, dynamic, and features both mellow clean sections and "wall of sound" climaxes of great intensity. Not completely unlike what you´re exposed to when listening to some shoegaze releases, but in a metal context. The vocals are predominantly black metal shrieks, but there are both hardcore tinged vocals, death metal growls, and a few clean vocal sections on the album too. One of the great assets of the music are the many melancholic lead guitar themes, which are almost impossible not to be affected by. The rhythms on the album vary from slow doomy beats, to mid-paced heavy beats, to blast beats.

The sound production is raw, detailed, and overall very well sounding. It helps bring out the right gloomy atmosphere and melancholic feeling in the music. Even when the music is most noisy and messy, which happens a couple of times when the wall of guitars and blast beats combine, it still sounds great and atmosphere enhancing. And "atmospheric" is exactly the word I´d use again and again when describing the music on "Archivist", because that´s the greatest strength of the release. Upon conclusion it´s a high quality debut album, and it´s a release where the concept and the music successfully gel together to enhance the overall listening experience. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.
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