SANNHET

Old meets old...and a bass to die for

Sannhet means truth or truthfulness in both Swedish and Norwegian. I guess these guys needed something with a Scandinavian flavour; after all the black metal they occasionally dip their toes in stems from the far north. As it happens I too come from Scandinavia. I eat snow and dill in equal quantities and often use my days watching trees lose their foliage and wither away in the sweeping winds. That's Scandinavia for ya....at least during the colder months. To any black metal fan that's about all Scandinavia is. Well we do get summers up here - sunshine, bikinis, badly produced pop music and big bellied German tourists all frequent our lands. Sannhet though seems enamoured with the music of frostbites and chess coloured war-paint. On 'Revisionist' all of this gets funnelled into the vast open country of America and effectively moves away from the shrieking aesthetics of say early Ulver or Darkthrone.

Nah Sannhet seems to have sucked up a fair few sonic fingerprints from the American countryside, be that from the towering brutes of Isis or the Texan purveyors of post rock Explosions in the Sky. Bombastic bone-crunchingly heavy riffs with hints of a guttural force normally found in death metal, Sannhet employs some of the same geriatrics I've heard through the last couple of decades - starting out with Neurosis' genesis wonder 'Souls at Zero'. Now music doesn't always have to be cutting edge for me to enjoy it. On the contrary, I often find deliberately progressive music unnecessarily contrived. The one problem with this album though remains it's inability to shake it's style. Post rock or indeed post metal has been oversaturated with Godspeed crescendos and Neurosian build-ups - almost to the point of nausea. Even when these usual suspect are blended into a hefty mix of contemporary electronics and what to these ears genuinely sound like early 1980s post punk, I still mostly hear a hundred other bands who've done this thing before...and slightly better.

Hang on a minute....why does this album then continue to travel back into my stereo? I guess it's the Joy Division touch. -Lunging through in the bass playing - like an insisting poodle screwing your shin. The first couple of times I listened to 'Revisionist' it reminded of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It continued to do so until one day after my morning juice séance. I popped on 'Unknown Pleasures' as I was walking out to the mighty water-closet where shampoo and toothpaste reside peacefully amongst each other - and then by the flick of the switch during 'Day of the Lords' and your's truly sitting comfortably on the can, I suddenly remembered that elusive bass from Sannhet. 'Eureka' I cried with happy tears in my eyes and a lovely smirk on my face that only really materialises during poops of heaven.

What does this album sound like then? What if Joy Division were American and had formed 20 years later with the intent of giving Godspeed, Isis and Neurosis a run for their money? You're close buddy - just cut out the dangerous frailty of one Ian Curtis and you're halfway there. Recommended to people with green shoes.

The second album by Brooklyn-based trio Sannhet sees them continuing to explore the niche of instrumental post-metal they had already found for themselves on their first full-length release. Revisionist secures Sannhet's promising sound, but exposes their weak songwriting.

With hints of both black and sludge metal, Sannhet's music is dense and fearful, a mood that they balance with a brighter, more accessible brand of post-metal that is the album's secondary sound, often switching effortlessly between the two styles within the same song, or finding a midpoint between them. The darker parts tend to lapse into blast beats, the guitar whining uneasily as the bass creates a murky backdrop. It lets up into flowing post-metal territory with a clean guitar forging the path ahead. Revisionist changes very easily and frequently from oppressively apprehensive, to lamenting and miserable, to the rare uplifting section.

While this variation in mood is a good premise on which the band has based their music, unfortunately, there isn't really any other appeal to Revisionist, not to mention it suffers from the flaw of dozens of other post-rock and post-metal bands ? it does not necessarily jump out at the listener, hard to notice unless one focuses on it. Like most post-metal, it has its ebb and flow, but whatever evolution that exists is subtle and restrained as it relies primarily on its atmosphere to carry it through, something that is not quite enough, while disregarding songwriting. The short lengths of these tracks betray that there is not enough time for much to happen, that they do not have the momentum to build up to a peak or even have the dynamics necessary for good post-metal, or a good song in general. On top of that, all of the pieces sound more or less the same, dragging out the experience towards the end, and none are particularly memorable. I've listened to this album at least five times and I cannot keep a single song in my head, even right after one has just ended.

Revisionist is not unpleasant but not particularly good, either. Sannhet has an interesting foundation for their sound but they aren't reaching their full potential. The atmosphere created by their fearful density coupled with the lighter post-metal has a lot of promise, but the songwriting of Revisionist is mediocre and unexciting. Nevertheless this is an album that makes me look forward to Sannhet's next output; they might be able to do great things in the future.

Thus far the zenith of the kind of experimental black metal encamped between the kvlt and indie, "Revisionist" ups the ante for epic/symphonic black via its particular influences and kind of experimentation. First and foremost, this is a post-black album, but rather than simply be another band who blackens Neurosis or crystalises Godspeed into metal, they instead plumb the possibilities that shoegaze brings to post music. Combine with some of the best of more standard post-metal, including some powerful riffs at times indebted to Emperor and their classic symph black, and you have a uniquely awesome, genre-elastic album. The whole record is sheerly forceful and grand, with never a dull moment, but "Mint Divine", and "Enemy Victorian"'s ending, stick out, they the purest statements of shoegaze influence on the entire album, as well as "False Pass", an epic track that then adds some delicious noise to the mix. By far some of the best post-metal in years, perfect for fans of post and epic metal, and the one album that metalheads unhappy with the Pitchfork blessed side of black metal should listen to anyways - it's worth every second and every penny.