Kalaallit Nunaat and Au Revoir are both one man Italian black metal bands.
Kalaallit Nunaat’s side of the split lasts 21 minutes and is divided into two tracks. The music is a mix of raw aggression in the traditional Scandinavian second wave style, and Cascadian atmospheric majesty along the lines of Wolves in the Throne Room, in spirit at least.
Raw and melodic, with serrated razor-sharp vocals, the two songs both express certain individual elements of their influences with cold, fuzzy aggression and grim mood. This is the kind of stuff I can easily sit back and let flow over me like a river of knives. It may be cutting and sharp, but it’s also strangely soothing and calming.
The traditional aspects of the music sometimes jar with the more atmospheric and experimental elements that appear here and there. The songs do perform some blending of the styles, but they also keep them apart a fair bit, moving from one to the other in various ways. It largely works quite well, reinforcing the underground nature of this sort of thing, but without really detracting from the music too much.
Unpolished, but still enjoyable.
Au Revoir has one track on this split lasting 19 minutes. This is post-black metal that takes elements of doom, shoegaze, and post-metal into its dark, blackened embrace. These are all mixed and merged together to create a single peiece of ambient post-black metal that’s slow, bleak, and mournful, but still carries a venomous bite largely down to the screamed vocal assault.
Still raw and underground, but with a more considered, coherent, and fluid approach to black metal, the track – In Memory of an Ephemeral Sunshine – sounds like a different side to Kalaallit Nunaat in some ways; it may be working from different source material, but both acts complement each other nicely.
Are you a connoisseur of underground black metal? If so, you’d be advised to check this out.
Wonderbox Metal 