Black Anvil – Triumvirate

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Historically, black metal has been a genre more easily associated with isolated, rural locales than urban ones. Even when black metal bands decide to evoke places where there are people, they’re typically windswept castles miles from the industrialized world, or, more stereotypically, black masses. But in the past half decade or so, a small handful of bands from teeming population centers have tried to put that grime into their music. Paris has Amesoeurs, Los Angeles has Lightning Swords of Death, Chicago has Nachtmystium, and now, New York City has Black Anvil. While Triumvirate retains all the hallmarks of the black metal genre, it’s not vast forests or satanic rituals that fuel the tremolo-picked riffs and strangled vocals; it’s grim Manhattan rush hour traffic, frostbitten skyscrapers, and misty sidewalk steam rising from cold metal vents. It is an album wholly reflective of the urban experience set to a soundtrack honed by rural forces. Tracks like What Is Life If Not Now! and Angels To Dust show the full range of the band’s blackened pedigree but still allow for deviation from their genre’s formula. It seems that Relapse Records may have stumbled upon another Next Big Thing, and this, their second LP, may eventually be heralded as a sign of greatness to come. Keep an ear to the ground.

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2010, Albums, Black Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Black Anvil