I like to think of
Under the Eye as Ride for Revenge's (RfR) black/sludge album. It's not sludgy in the way of Baroness or Grief, mind you, but it does have a qualitatively different sonic texture that evokes the grime and scaliness of the word "sludge". Mixed with their downer approach to black metal, and you have an oppressive mix of the dirtiest filth released in 2011.
The most immediate aspect of
Under the Eye is a word not previously uttered unless one regard's their absence: "guitars".
Under the Eye is the first album to feature a dedicated guitarist, and the band wastes no time in showing this fact. After the Commodore 64-style introductory electronic track, "Second Gate Opened with Power" launches into Harald Mentor roaring over crunchy and extremely down-tuned guitars, to the extent that one would not be amiss to mistake them as bass if there weren't even lower frequencies carrying the rhythm.
Under the Eye signaled a change in the band's approach to occult Finnish black metal: whereas
Wisdom of the Few strongly focused on the bass and
The King of Snakes exclusively used it,
Under the Eye brings far more prominence to guitars as an instrument. Mid-track highlight "Through" excellently shows this, with the guitars and bass generally following similar root notes until the final minute brings forth several multi-tracked guitars that are stereophonically mixed all to one side or the other, weaving in and out of the main riff. "The Gutter and the Grave" and "Prevail in Hell" both feature Kreator-esque solos that crash on top of the mix and then leave almost as randomly.
The hiss from
Wisdom of the Few instead turns toward feedback and static. "From Darkness We Ride" makes screeching guitar feedback a main compositional element, especially at the mid-song break. Both "Through" and the final, title track include periods of crackle and pop, with the last overall two minutes of the album soundtracking will-to-power proclamations with horrendous noise. "The Hawk Appears" is the most outwardly esoteric track on this release, being primarily the RfR-style boundless percussion with metal-string sitar plucking that slowly discovers its own beat separate from the other instruments.
Compared to other LPs,
Under the Eye may seem more of a "standard" black metal release, but this is not entirely fair. It has its share of weirdness, even if it doesn't quite approach the warbling end to
The King of Snakes. From the bleepiest/bloopiest intro of "For Those About to Kneel" to the white noise ending,
Under the Eye is still as intense as the rest of RfR's LPs. While the huge focus on guitars usurps some of the earlier weirdness and can make a few tracks sound a bit too similar (e.g. "The Endless Flood" and "Second Gate Opened with Power"), there's a lot of awesome to be found here.
Sample:
youtube.com/watch?v=CevhyZBZmqk&list=RDCevhyZBZmqk&start_radio=1&t=720s
