VALDUR – GUILDED ABYSS

(Andy Synn gazes deep into the Guilded Abyss in advance of its release tomorrow)

I’ve spoken before, both briefly and at length, about how thankful I am that NCS is a wholly incompetent independent entity.

Don’t get me wrong, when I actually wrote for a physical magazine I was still pretty much left to my own devices, but the fact that we have no advertisers to placate, no industry higher-ups to fellate, and for the most part aren’t reliant on PR reps/divisions to feed us potential content (which often comes with an assumed quid pro quo that future access will be contingent on positive coverage), means that Islander, DGR, and I are essentially a law unto ourselves.

And because of this, because we make our own rules and don’t have to answer to anyone else, we’re able to do things like start the week off by reviewing the already incredibly popular album from future mainstream Metalcore darlings Dying Wish and end it by telling you all to save space for the latest slab of suffocating Black/Death savagery from underground iconoclasts Valdur.

If you’re not familiar with the band – and their last release, barring a stand-alone single in 2020, was a little over seven years ago – then this deep-dive I wrote way back when might be a good place to start.

Suffice it to say, however, that Valdur‘s musical journey across the course of six (and, with the release of Guilded Abyss, soon to be seven) albums has seen them shifting back and forth between Black Metal and Death Metal… and various other, increasingly ugly, permutations in between… in a manner which makes it very clear that the band consider the boundaries between the two styles as being all but nonexistent.

And, wouldn’t you know it, the raw, scorching sound of “Hailing Molten Meteors” – which does indeed feel like being pummelled by an apocalyptic rain of burning volcanic stone – only reinforces this impression of Valdur as a band committed to the endless pursuit of the more extreme edge of the Black/Death Metal spectrum.

That’s not to say they don’t occasionally flirt with a touch of morbid melody – both the aforementioned opener and the torturously twisted title-track conceal some insidious coils of malevolently melodic tremolo beneath their harrowingly abrasive assault (the second half of “Guilded Abyss” in particular is laced with an almost lethal amount of disturbing (dis)harmony – but the focus, for the most part, is on pure auditory annihilation.

Note, however, that I said “for the most part”… as the band aren’t afraid of a little bit of atmosphere here and there either (the titanic, Teitanblood-esque “Mangled and Rotting”, for example, uses its layers of dense, discordant distortion to conjure an oppressively claustrophobic sense of abyssal depth over the course of just over eight agonising minutes, while the aptly-named “Doomed Pt. II” slows things down to a creeping, dirge-like crawl to allow the listener to really wallow in the haunting horror of it all).

And although there remains an emphasis on inflicting pure sonic punishment, it’s this balance between terror and tension – with the likes of “Drinking from the Chalice of Banishment” being as vicious and visceral, yet also eerily, unsettlingly infectious, as anything the group have put out in living memory, while the blistering blackened conflagration of “Stars of Belial” ultimately climaxes in a hauntingly hypnotic finale guaranteed to stay with you long after the album has finished – which makes Guilded Abyss (including flesh-stripping bonus track “Waves of Boiling Water / Hailing Molten Meteors Pt. II”) arguably one of the band’s best albums yet.