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BLACK LAVA “The Savage Winds To Wisdom”
BLACK LAVA “The Savage Winds To Wisdom”
By Dr. Abner Mality
Once in a while, you run into a band that has talent and songwriting ability, yet you still can’t really get into them. Australia’s BLACK LAVA has turned out to be such a band for me. “The Savage Winds To Wisdom” is not a bad album at all, but honestly, I won’t remember anything about it in a week.
Stylistically, this is a progressive kind of black metal with thoughtful songs and icecold melody. It’s definitely not what you’d call the Christ-raping war machine of a MARDUK or GORGOROTH. And the progressive elements are not as extreme as what you’d find in ENSLAVED. It’s middle of the road kind of stuff...lots of jangly, flanged guitar, varied tempos and a kind of restraint that keeps BLACK LAVA from being an all out assault.
The first half of the album frankly just flows right past me like lukewarm water. There’s some nice playing here, but not much more. When we get to “Ironclad Sarcophagus”, things do start to pick up. This one has got a bit of groove to it and some cool riffing. “Pagan Dust” and “Sanguis Lupus” follow in similar manner...the guitar soloing is really sharp on the latter cut. The album ends with the title track, which is the longest. This starts pretty slow but it does build tension as it goes along and the guitar soloing is the best thing on the album by far. If the whole album had been like the last four tracks, it would have been...better, but still not truly top notch.
I’m sure BLACK LAVA put their heart and soul into this but it’s just not doing it for me. Years ago, before music became a daily onslaught of dozens of albums, I might have spent more time with this and let it sink in a bit more. These days, that’s harder and harder to do….for everybody.
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