HAIL SPIRIT NOIR — Pneuma (review)

HAIL SPIRIT NOIR — Pneuma album cover Album · 2012 · Black Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Pneuma" is the debut full-length studio album by Greek progressive extreme metal act Hail Spirit Noir. The album was released through code666 in March 2012. Hail Spirit Noir features three members of Greek avant garde/post-black metal act Transcending Bizarre?.

The music on the album is in quite an eclectic progressive extreme metal style, that may be somewhat rooted in black metal but travels far beyond the usual boundaries of the genre and greatly challenges the genre characteristics of that style. Warm vintage sounding keyboards/organ, progressive song structures, 70s hard rock influences, psychadelic elements, a blackened rock´n´roll touch (just listen to the main riff in "Against the Curse, We Dream" or "Haire Pneuma Skoteino") and just a general playfullness that´s greatly charming. A band like Enslaved comes to mind, but Hail Spirit Noir has a kind of freakshow/dark carnival atmosphere present in their music that is far removed from the more serious sounding Norwegians. The vocals on "Pneuma" are, in addition to the adventurous instrumental part of the music, one of the great assets of the album. the blackened raspy harsh type vocals and the commanding powerful clean vocals are both delivered with great conviction and skill.

The album features 6 tracks distributed over a 36:57 minutes of playing time, so it´s safe to say it´s not a very long album. I´d take quality over quantity any day though and there´s plenty of quality here to justify the relatively short playing time. "Pneuma" is simply an enjoyable album from beginning to end (the only exception being the 4 minute ambient/noise ending to "Into the Gates of Time", which to my ears is wasting precious playing time). A 4.5 star (90%) rating is fully deserved.
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