TONGUES
TONGUES “Formlose Stjerne”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Here’s a Danish black metal band that plays a sophisticated brand of metal. This is the kind of black metal that takes its occult lore very seriously and comes up with song structures equally serious. This is on the esoteric I, Voidhanger label so some weirdness is to be expected, but in the case of TONGUES, they keep it under control.
Four tracks here, with three of medium length and one 15 minute plus monster. “Elder Fire” builds slowly after starting with ominous synth rumbles and finally bursts into a fast burst of jangly black metal with croaking vocals. The song never stays in one place for too long and features some pretty avant-garde lead soloing. “Awake In the Macrochasm” is even more restless...it breaks into a cool warped and woozy riff about halfway through and finishes with a flurry of melodic leads. “Mouth of the Deep” almost leans more towards death metal, with A. Lovmand’s vocals ar their most guttural.
After the first three tracks featured shifting riffs and tempos, the huge title track ends the album with a strange but alluring bit of blackened doom. This one stays slow and evil all the way through, even though it feels at several points like it might ramp up. There’s a super gooey and twisted doom riff that forms the foundation of the second half of the song...it’s very hypnotic. And on top of that is a barrage of dissonant and weird lead work. It doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does, and very well, too.
There were a couple of times I began to lose interest, but on the whole, this is a really solid offering of thinking man’s black metal. Compared to a lot of stuff on I, Voidhanger, this is fairly orthodox.