YEARS PAST MATTER

Krallice's 'Years Past Matter' is the fourth album from this very obscure and totally uncompromising progressive black metal band from New York City. This is an album which grabs you by the scruff of the neck and never lets go or gives you much time to breathe. The music on this record is utterly suffocating at times.

This is the only album I've heard by Krallice, but I'm led to believe that their other three studio albums are very similar to 'Years Past Matter'. One thing is for certain - Krallice are definitely a band for the brave listener. Without an extensive background of listening to extreme metal this might be dismissed purely as noise. To be honest even with an extensive background of black and death metal experience I consider this album to be right on the edge of my listening threshold.

The music here is extremely dense. It is primal, raw and totally crushing. The guitars form an impenetrable wall of sound made from ultra-fast tremolo picking in true black metal style. In some ways it reminds me of the early work of Ulver, but taken to its extremes. At first the music in 'Years Past Matter' might appear totally unstructured - and in many ways it is. How they can play this live I'll never know - but the diligent listener will also find some really amazing musical sections buried within the cacophony. But reaching them can prove a challenge! Pressed for a genre I'd probably class this as extreme avant garde progressive black metal - what a mouthful!...

As I've said the biggest problem I have with the album is the meandering lack of structure. There aren't really any hooks to pull you into this one. Maybe I'm getting old and today's young extreme metal fan will think this record to be pretty tame. Its had perhaps a half-a-dozen spins, which isn't really enough to write a review from but I'm not entirely sure I want to listen to this album any-more. It might be the most amazing extreme prog-metal release ever but I've run out of patience to try and decipher the music on offer here.

Anyway, to try and assign a rating to this album is going to be tough. Its definitely not a 1 or 2 star record as the music here is definitely very skilful, but I also can't give it more than 3 stars. There are clever moments here, and who knows this might grow on me some more if I can continued to listen enough times but as for right now I'll give this one 3-stars... But I'd definitely encourage anyone into extreme metal to try it out, you never know - it might click for you and become an instant masterpiece!