This is the fourth album from Indonesian one-man black metal band Pure Wrath.
Bleak Days Ahead is the 41-minute folow up to 2022’s well-received Hymn to the Woeful Hearts. The artist behind Pure Wrath has returned, accompanied by a cast of associates that bring drums, additional vocals, and saxophone to the table.
Bleak Days Ahead manifests as atmospheric black metal, albeit of a diverse makeup. It’s a contemporary, vicious incarnation, yet still carries with it the Pure Wrath mood-rich stamp. Enhanced with a range of instruments in addition to the saxophone mentioned above, such as synths, organ, piano, and mellotron, Bleak Days Ahead offers up five well-rounded hymns to struggle, hardship, and hopelessness.
Bleak Days Ahead is a record of two parts, but these are mostly merged at the cellular level – raging hostility and despondent despair. In other words, these two facets of Pure Wrath have been welded together, resulting in music that benefits from the strengths of both.
On the one hand, this is black metal that bares its teeth for all to see. Snarling, aggressive; it forcefully crafts atmosphere with hostile intent. This aspect of Pure Wrath hates the world and wants to burn it to the ground.
On the other hand, it’s also black metal that’s thoughtful and melancholic. Ripe with emotional resonance, the music cuts to the heart of the matter with sharp melodic feeling. It effectively builds soundscapes of carefully rendered atmospheric immersion.
Either of these sides alone would make for a strong record. Taken together, entwined in a doomed embrace that wants to take everyone with it as it falls, it’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Across the record you’ll find elements torn from a range of subgenres and styles. The album shares some DNA with depressive black metal, but not enough to full qualify as this. It definitely feels progressive in places, whereas in others it walks frozen ancient paths laid down in the second wave era. Classic blackened riffs scythe through the airwaves as progressive interludes provide refuge from the raging storm. Post-black resplendence meets dark underground supremacy in a clash of blades where there can be no victor. In short, within these 41 minutes of music you’ll find many different ingredients, all of them subsumed within Pure Wrath’s comprehensive and compelling black metal framework.
The final track – Opaque Mist – also offers something different. There’s initially no black metal, just a highly effective mood-focused electronically enriched work that comes across as reminiscent of Manes or Lethe. It ends with black metal, and is a stunning way to finish the record. The song comes across as something that Der Weg Einer Freiheit might do.
Bleak Days Ahead is a strong record. It is an accomplished and engaging slice of black metal, with lots to digest. It moves from the straightforward to the complex with ease, mixing and matching styles and influences with fluency, all within a natural flow that feels coherent and well-judged.
Very highly recommended. Fans of everyone from Panopticon to Satyricon to White Ward to Winterfylleth and more should check this out.
Wonderbox Metal 