Solus Grief – With a Last Exhale

Peregrinus took a manic approach to raw black metal in the Unholy Craft tape for this batch, and here, as Solus Grief, crafts a completely different shade of black metal. From a decidedly raw atmospheric bent, we have a perfect distillation of what makes depressive atmospheric black metal so intoxicating. The melodies are devastating and beautiful and dripping with a melancholic longing. The pace is slower and yet driving nonetheless. With four tracks, the shortest being 9:10, this debut album is more epic and well-designed than it has any business being. Heavily distorted bass couples perfectly with piercing guitar melody while the vocals wail from underneath the heft of the instrumentals. With decidedly cold, grim, and sorrowful intensity, ‘With a Last Exhale’ envelopes the listener easily in a cocoon of rapturous agonizing cacophonous noise culminating in powerful metal crescendos. While it’s almost sacrilege to reference post-rock with regard to black metal, this album does a masterful job of evoking the same emotional reaction without falling prey to the overused/overworked tropes of such a wasteland of a genre.

With Solus Grief, Unholy Craft, Kvad, and others, Peregrinus is positioning himself among the few that can successfully craft black metal in a wide variety of styles making each project unique and remarkable in its own right. The riffs of this pensive piece of black metal stick insistently in the mind and will beckon the listener back again and again. Norway has a new trailblazer for this modern age. Hail Peregrinus.

- EPH

Edition of 100