Alburnum are a black metal band from the Netherlands and this is their second album.
The Withered Roots of Reality is a 35-minute black metal album that combines elements of the atmospheric, folk, pagan, and melodic styles. Alburnum tie their influences together well, making for an easily enjoyable album with much to recommend it.
For a starting point for the Alburnum experience, I’d say they remind me a of mix of bands such as Agalloch, Dawn Ray’d, Winterfylleth, and Windir, at least broadly speaking. The Withered Roots of Reality is well-developed and pieced together, as these comparisons might suggest, and Alburnum have impressed me with these five songs, (plus interlude, which is a very nice instrumental).
Alburnum know how to craft engaging black metal. The songs have affecting riffs, memorable melodies, and blackened hooks. There’s melodic aggression and emotive colour aplenty, as well as epic majesty, an earthy heroic feel in places, and intimate immersive folk. Of the latter, this aspect of the material is embedded well, and includes the use of accordion, acoustic guitars, horns, and mandolin; Alburnum deploy these instruments at key moments in order to provide texture and detailing. More widely, folk influences can be felt in many of the leads and riffs.
The songs are well-written and each track is enjoyable and bears up to close scrutiny. Sometimes melancholic, sometimes joyous, the music balances its dark and light moods across the album to ensure that neither is too much in ascendancy for too long. I like the vocals a great deal too – a mix of soaring cleans and savage screams, the singer has a good voice and puts in a comprehensive performance throughout.
The Withered Roots of Reality deserves your attention. If you’re a fan of the style then there’s a lot of top quality material here for you to digest. Based on this record, Alburnum is a name that deserves greater recognition and exposure, so let’s hope that The Withered Roots of Reality helps them get this.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 