Darvulia - Mysticisme Macabre

I am certain that there is no way I'm going to easily sell you on this album.  My goal here is to tell you why I love this band so much instead.  If you can find some intrigue in my attempt, then I wholly invite you to dive into this mind bending and sometimes hypnotic album.

First lets get a few things out of the way to make this easier for both of us.  This isn't epic, melodic, retro, goat-y, necro, and doesn't sound much like any other black metal band I've ever heard..  Musically, this is quite original and scratches an itch that only Lugubrum, and maaaaaaybe Vediog Svaor have even begun to scratch in the past.  Not to toot my own horn much either but the riffing is also reminiscent of my old band "Satan's Almighty Penis."  Of course there are some familiar tenets of black metal found here: varied but frequently blasting drums, fairly typical but notably well performed vocals and a typical overall production value that does the music justice by being somewhat dry and pallid with a bit of snarl to it.  You should be able to dive right into if you've listened to ten or more black metal albums before.

Ok so now that I have cleared all of that out of the way: THE RIFFS!  The guitar work of Darvulia's Kobal is out of this world.  The riffing is HIGHLY imaginative, often grinding, completely disharmonious and dissonant as all fuck.  If you are looking for riffs that make you think about mountains, trees, lakes, pirates, castles, vikings or pretzels, DON'T ENTRY!!  All I can say is that musically this stuff is very obnoxious and therefore insanely hellish and challenging.  Half of what makes "Mysticisme Macabre" so enjoyable and refreshing for me is that it is what it isn't.  The other half is that there is some highly challenging and obtuse music composition found here, and Darvulia have become highly productive within this style.  The composition is about as untraditional as you can get.  The varied ebb and flow of their 5-7 minute long songs keep me enthralled more than a lot of records of this ilk ever do.  Its disgustingly awkward enough to keep me interested and yet not so unrelenting that it gets boring.  I often find myself listening to it three or four times in row.

I haven't been able to peel myself away from this album for a long enough time to check out the rest of Darvulia's catalog, but I really look forward to seeing where else they can take this band.