VORGA — Striving Toward Oblivion (review)

VORGA — Striving Toward Oblivion album cover

Album · 2022 · Melodic Black Metal

4/5 · 2022-03-06
siLLy puPPy

While technical death metal has been racing pellmell to escape the gravitational stranglehold of our homeward (assuming you’re reading this on the Earth), other sub-sectors of the metal universe are quickly catching up with black metal evolving past its anti-religion and misanthropic roots to a more cosmic vision of bleakness, depression and everything bad! The German band VORGA is just one of many up and coming acts that has eschewed the black and white monochromatic second wave black metal shtick and opted to debut in full multi-hued Kodachrome effects with its debut release STRIVING TOWARD OBLIVION.

This band emerged from the Karlsruhe region of southern Germany in 2016 and features three members from the UK, Bulgaria and Germany making this an interesting tour de force that offers a bit more mystique than the average stuck in the past black metal band these days. The space metal thing is hardly anything new and with black metal bands like Darkspace and Oranssi Pazuzu getting the space party started, it was only inevitable that all those forces of darkness would gravitate to something even bigger than perpetual goat worship and body corpse paint, namely the cosmos!

While the cover art may insinuate yet another tech death band setting off to distant galaxies far far away, VORGA is a melodic yet dynamic black metal band through and through. Melodic in its essence with a black’n’roll sorta groovy musical procession but kept in the black metal throes of ugliness with mangled jangly guitar chords, raging tempos that include dueling guitar riffs, direct energy weapon percussive precision and of course the blackest of black metal attributes in the raspy screamed vocal department. Add a slickly produced atmospheric overcast that pacifies the raging metal attributes and you have the perfect soundtrack to accompany your theme park space travel on your way to the archeological finds on Planet X!

For a debut album VORGA has found its own style although comparisons have been made to the Icelandic frigidness of Kvaen and Ifellow space travelers Imperialista, both up and coming acts with a similar vision. VORGA walks that tightrope between repetitive riffing that offers a consistency to latch onto while adding enough variety to keep things from growing as stale as mashed potatoes without any condiments. The brutal bombast of the guitar riffage keeps the black metal aspects in full fury mode while the atmospheric keys provide a melodic backdrop which oft become the dominating factor but it’s Petar Yordanov’s consistent set-to-fury mode that keep this firmly planted in the extreme metal section of the head banger’s musical playhouse.

While VORGA is a new creation, drummer Fran k Jervas is a seasoned veteran having playing in many metal bands over the last couple of decades and the relative recent formation of this band is belied by its undeniable command of all the elements required to craft an intriguing and attention keeping black metal album of the modern era. According to the band’s own words, VORGA will appeal to fans of Dissection, Necrophobic, Imperialist, Mare Cognitum, Unanimated, Sacramentum, Dark Funeral, Immortal, Gorgoroth but in reality sounds like none of those bands thus inching the world of black metal into another branch of the parent tree. This is a vital and dynamic debut and clearly VORGA is a force to be reckoned with in the modern crowded world of black metal and beyond.