The debut album from this new Finnish outfit aspires to the non-stop intensity of Dawn’s ‘Slaughtersun’, but finds itself short on the momentum required to maintain this for a full length release. As a result they dial back the taught, precision riffcraft of their Swedish forebears in favour of a more folky, homey approach to supplement the high drama typical of this style. But to their credit, this is presented as no mere compromise, but finds itself neatly knitted into the sweeping, epic narratives that Valravn aspire to, as exhibited on tracks like ‘The Raven’, and the acoustic intro and outro that bookend the album.
Production is par-for-the-course for this style, with guitars in their rightful place dominating the mix. Bass cuts through, but not distractingly so, acting as a presence rather than a melodic entity in itself. Drums adopt a similar role, underpinning all with forensic timing and artistic expression that works in unison with the instrumental centrepieces. Vocals are an interesting concoction of hardcore stylings aspiring to fill the black metal shoes they have been forced to wear on ‘Prey’. Whilst this is not outlandish – the line between traditional black metal vocal technics and hardcore is much closer than many would have you believe – it immediately strikes the ear on first listen as an unusual creative choice for a style with such rigid parameters of technique.
Whilst Dawn strung out longform narratives from riff collections defined by their economy of notes, Valravn supplement this approach with pockets of smaller riffs and refrains articulated through lead melodies as opposed to the architecture of tremolo picking. The breakneck intensity is further supplemented by slower numbers such as ‘Conjuration’, which avoids the utter tedium that a lot of black metal is prone to when it sinks below 80bpm, with a good dollop of rhythmic shuffles and melodic articulation.
The realm of melodic blackened death metal has become a surprisingly crowded field in recent years. Surprising due to the subtleties that lurk at its heart. Superficially, it’s a samey, homogenous sonic colour palette, defined by highly formalised and ultimately limited compositional techniques. And whilst it’s certainly true that the style takes a certain headspace to fully absorb, it’s also true that there are few misses and many hits. Of course the heady days of ‘Far Away From the Sun’ and ‘Slaughtersun’ are probably far behind us, but albums like ‘Prey’ offer a reasonable simulation. Like a Wagnerian opera, the level of concentration required, aligning the rhythm of our thought processes with that of the music drains the intellect as much as it nourishes the spirit. But many promising worlds await those able and willing to commit, with potentialities far outstripping many of its sister genres for technical as well as artistic expression.
An otherwise-new entity, Valravn nevertheless evince a mastery beyond their short time as a band with their first public recording, the full-length Prey. Arriving very fully formed, Valravn's debut album no doubt displays characteristics of Finland's now-world-renown black metal sound - cryogenic melody, raw 'n' rugged execution, an unapologetic assertion of traditionalism - but in other, more telling aspects, Prey asserts its own identity counter to this prevailing paradigm.
Valravn truly sound like a band, as in four individuals playing together in the same room rather than the usual copy/paste practices used by so many studio-only "bands." This very tangible physicality bleeds over into the overall emotion of Prey, whereby the listener can literally FEEL every note...and every note is vital, virile, vivid. Of course, Valravn are a black metal band, and black metal by definition is monochromatic, but that vividness is writ large across the album's eight central tracks, each one as cutting 'n' concise as the next. As such, Prey feels a lot larger than it should, for the band pack in an almost-cresting sense of the epic into these tight 'n' taut tracks.
From the tranquil, tellingly autumnal acoustic opening and across comparable textures, Prey burns with the intensity of a November coming fire. But Valravn's just-revealed torch is a timeless one, resonating across all seasons and most especially the dread grasp of winter, as this year comes to a close and Prey readies to spread its wings much like its cover-art subject.
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