Perchta – D​’​Muata (Review)

This is the second album from Perchta, a black metal band from Austria.

D​’​Muata offers a 48-minute atmospheric blackened folk experience that’s compelling and immersive. Perchta have crafted a strong personality of their own on this record, and it’s one that serves them well for almost all of the album.

Perchta’s music is a ritualistic blend of raw black metal and folk instrumentation, sounds, and ideas. It manifests as an individual take on the style, offering scathing aggression and rich atmosphere in equal amounts. For a rough starting point for the Perchta sound, think of a mix of bands such as Thy Worshiper, Cradle of Filth, Arcturus, Heilung, Sigh, The Wolves of Avalon, Ebony Lake, and Panopticon, as viewed through an old-school lens. As stated, this is only a very rough guide though, as Perchta definitely have their own character.

The music’s blackened base is raw and ferocious, but built on these second wave foundations are folk enrichments that scream of quality and attention to detail. An emotive depth is apparent that’s absent from much black metal, as is a multifaceted approach to folk texturing that raises the songs up to much higher planes than they might have otherwise achieved. Ranging from the savage to the transcendental, the music is epic and well-crafted, while still retaining an earthy, raw honesty and authenticity that’s endearing.

D’Muata delivers an intricate and varied journey. From raging black metal darkness to expressive folk-influenced light, Perchta take the listener down paths less travelled. Sometimes the black metal influences are in ascendence and sometimes the folk ones are, while at others they are well and truly entwined, which is probably when the band are at their best. Add to this elements of symphonic black metal and also of the avant-garde style, and you have an album that covers a lot of ground. There really is a lot to discover as you explore D’Muata.

The vocals are a mix of screams and cleans, with a varied delivery not implied by this simplistic description. Across the album you can hear a lot of different moods and feelings – viciousness, enchantment, anger, melancholy, to name just a very few – and always the performance levels are high.

D’Muata has a lot to offer fans of atmospheric/folk black metal. It’s not a perfect album by any means – Heiliges Bluat and Ausbruch are filler interlude tracks that adds very little, for example – but ignoring these D’Muata is a strong album, especially once you get to know its idiosyncrasies. Perchta have impressed, and this is definitely to be recommended for fans of the aforementioned styles.