SKÁPHE³

Ever since the 90s the metal universe has produced some very strange variants. No longer were short catchy guitar riffs with melodic high pitched vocals and standard songwriting the only game in town. Hard to say when it all began but the big players were Meshuggah and Gorguts who started to experiment with atonality, dissonance and even harder to swallow progressive angularities. The style was a smashing hit for those who crave the energetic immediacy and distortion of the metal universe but with more surreal soundscapes laced with psychedelia and avant-garde weirdness.

Once Deathspell Omega took the world of black metal to unthinkable complexities with its own brand of avant-garde weirdness that incorporated spidery jangle guitars that were atonal and drowning in dissonance, a whole slew of new bands began to emerge in its wake. Portal, Wormlust, Blut Aus Nord, Gnaw Their Tongues and countless new bands followed suit and carved out entirely new niches of extreme metal within the aforementioned parameters. While some bands like Norway's Sjodogg may have proven too close to the source for my tastes, other bands like SKÁPHE have proven that they can use the classic Deathspell Omega sound as the template and still craft compelling psychedelic and progressive black metal that captures the spirit of what's been called "cavern-core."

Originally a solo project of the Philadelphia based Alex Poole who started out as a one-man black metal act, he was joined by Icelandic vocalist Dagur Gíslason (of 0, Abacination, Martröð, Naðra) in 2015. On this third album, a third member, Jack Blackburn joins ranks and sets things ablaze with his wickedly wild aggressive drumming style. While not exactly creative in the album titling department, SKÁPHE simply adds numbers to its moniker and all good. Not counting the split with Wormulust or the untiled one-track EP, SKÁPHE³ is the band's third album. Well, duh! As nebulous and abstract as many a progressive black metal act, this trio seems to dwell in the same blackened metaphysical subject matter as its influences. On SKÁPHE³ there are ten tracks that basically continue the themes throughout the albums.

Each begins with Roman numerals. This started on "Skáphe²" which began with Roman numeral I and finished at VI. The following EP featured only VII and this album SKÁPHE³ starts off with VIII and ends with XVII. Not that anyone can understand a single word of course! This is noisy cavern-core black metal with creepy claustrophobic atmospheres, spidery dissonant guitar workouts and progressive meandering compositions that sometimes enter the progressive metal clean vocal styles of Enslaved. The emphasis is much more on the echoey dark ambience with soaring guitar leads playing in tandem with crunchy guitar riffs. The rhythmic cadences are led by the jazz-fueled drumming. While a few tracks like "Glass Sarcophagus" sounds a little too close to Deathspell Omega for comfort, for the majority of SKÁPHE³ has captured a very distinct micro-style within this section of the extreme metal universe.

This is the type of metal that is a hard pill to swallow for sure. While it may come off as noise (and there is plenty of that!), this sort of metal is like the metal equivalent of 21st century avant-garde classical. It relies on complex patterns that involve microtones and incongruent contrapuntal elements to create extreme musical tension. Poole's vocals are very much in the Mikko Aspa arena but sound distinct and even more "cavernous" if that's possible. If Deathspell Omega sounds like they record in the fiery pits of hell then SKÁPHE³ sounds like it was recorded in the underground tunnels below hell! This is what i call adventurist's black metal where every element is designed to be as extreme and alienating as humanly possible. Why the subtleties are what make or break these types of albums can be a mystery but for my ears, SKÁPHE does an excellent job of balancing DoS styled dissonant black metal with dramatic Nile influenced musical scales, extreme cavernous atmospheres and smoking hot musicianship. Me like!