Manetheren – The End (Review)

This is the fourth album by Manetheren, a black metal band from the US.

Here we have 62 minutes of atmospheric black metal with dark, nihilistic, apocalyptic themes.

Manetheren’s approach to black metal is one of layering. Various levels of musical content are piled on top of each other to create tracks that don’t suffer from a lack of depth. This is not done in an ‘everything louder than everything else’ kind of way, but more selectively, so that the band can make the most of the atmospheres and moods that are offered to them via the musical choices they have made.

The songs expand and breathe into their spaces, powered by keen minds with an appreciation for black metal that creates vividly bleak soundscapes of future atrocities and end times. The tracks reek of forlorn hope and lost dreams, set to the soundtrack of the last life ever lived.

The band show an inventive use of sound across the songs. Using a firm base of atmospheric black metal with a depressive edge, some of the melodies and atmospheric enhancements that they employ demonstrate what a fertile and vibrant imagination the band clearly have. Shrouded in darkness and misery for sure, but from this wellspring of horror comes great creativity it seems.

As for the singer, his screams ring clear and true out of the atmospheric music. Like liquid malice, his voice seems to herald dark visions of threatening things to come.

I find that an album like this is a real pleasure to put on late at night, when it seems even easier to just get lost in the dark imagery and emotive black metal that the band create.

I enjoyed this a lot. Embrace The End.