Circle of Salt – Suffer the Cold

Band – Circle of Salt

Album – Suffer the Cold

Country of Origin – Canada

Genre – Post Black Metal

Release Date – December 18th, 2017

Label – Avantegarde Music

Author – JDecker

Italian label Avantgarde Music handling the re-release duties of this incredible Canadian number from Circle Of Salt that came out in 2015.

Two tracks, numbering at the 20 minute and 19 minute length. Atmospheric black metal of the highest order. Re-release coming on a 6 panel digipack or on vinyl. That’s classy. And fitting.

“Suffer The Cold”  and “Beneath The Frozen Moon Of Imbolc” make up this relatively slept on post-black metal masterpiece. 39 minutes of brilliant writing and songmanship in the black metal genre, split almost exactly down the middle.

“Beneath The Frozen Moon Of Imbolc” is a progressive and marginally edgy exercise in black metal for today. Consisting of all the tried and true components that comprise trve kvlt black metal, the tune also gets a little symphonic and borderline theatrical before morphing into a blackened sludge monstrosity that ultimately devolves into a beautiful atmospheric, ambient – dare I say, dungeon synth – outro.

“Suffer The Cold” comes in unfolding from big kick drums and overall cavernous percussion before walls of fuzzed out goodness bubble in under the surface. Sludge speed breakdown atmospheric black metal explodes into an assault of truly incredible black metal brilliance, huge lush movements of noise and guitars and – what can best described as – “melody” weave in and out of one another, crafting trve black metal like few can do today.

Adhering fairly tightly to the supposed rules of black metal, Circle Of Salt manage to also convincingly pull elements from other parts of the heavy metal universe and assemble them expertly. Post-metal, Doom, Dungeon Synth, Sludge, and more mingle comfortably and enjoyably with truly awesome black metal on this one.

Rating:  4.25/5