Carach Angren: Dance and Laugh Amongst the Rotten

When I was growing up, I regularly heard stories about the awful things that could happen when kids played with Ouija boards. I'm not sure why these stories were so popular back in the 1980s, but I heard them so often that they became clichéd cautionary tales. Don't play with Ouija boards—I get it. Little did I know that all these years later, I would continue to hear tales involving the perils of Ouija boards in movies, novels, and now on Carach Angren's newest release.

The album's plot is simple: a little girl's fascination with Ouija boards brings a malevolent spirit into her home. The story is generally interesting and the band does a pretty good job developing it over the course of 40 minutes. Whether or not you will enjoy this album as an album, however, will depend how much you like symphonic black metal that tends toward the theatrical. Carach Angren has always been dark, but they have also pushed their sound in directions that sometimes leaves fans behind. On this album, the band establishes some strong extreme metal riffs but they don't balance things with the symphonic passages as well as they could have. There are even moments on this album when the symphonic sounds overly theatrical, whimsical almost. Given the album's dark subject matter, the heavy theatricality sometimes feels out of place. Listen to "Blood Queen" or "In De Naam Van De Duiven" for examples of the ways the band's blend of styles move and shift. I'm not suggesting Carach Angren has lost their edge, just that their blend of the symphonic and the extreme on this album are sometimes at odds.

Track Listing:
1. Opening
2. Charlie
3. Blood Queen
4. Charles Francis Coghlan
5. Song for the Dead
6. In De Naam Van De Duivel
7. Pitch Black Box
8. The Possession Process
9. Three Times Thunder Strikes

Added: June 29th 2017
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 1657
Language: english

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