(We present NCS writer Gonzo’s review of the debut album released in January by the California band Vesseles.)
A friend once made an interesting point to me about metal in general:
With some exceptions, metal is basically the modern-day equivalent of counterpoint.
It’s important to note that this friend wasn’t just spewing uninformed opinions—he’s a damn good guitarist and he’s released at least one equally good death metal record in the past few years. Also, it helps that I agree with his observation.
But as much as I could bore the shit out of you all about metal and its atavistic origins, this review isn’t about that.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about why California’s Vesseles is not only keenly aware of what they owe to classical music in their ambitious debut, Home, but also how deftly they wield it.
To put things bluntly, I think I gave up on symphonic black metal years ago. Much of it tends to rely on the trope of overwhelming, let’s-force-an-entire-fucking-orchestra-into-every-song repetition. It’s almost like every band in the subgenre heard Dimmu Borgir’s “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse” and copy/pasted that arrangement into an inferior imitation.
None of this is the case with what Vesseles has crafted with Home. Emerging from the big tech-dominated hellscape of Santa Clara, this trio—fresh from a lineup revamp in 2025 that saw the addition of bassist Ron Graves and drummer Nick Brown—has struck symphonic black metal gold. Featuring searing arrangements that weave in classical piano interludes courtesy of founding member Valira Pietrangelo, Home takes a formula you’ve heard before and breathes its smoldering black breath back into its icy veins.
Over the course of its nine songs, Home fearlessly travels through the orchestral, the heavy, and even the experimental. “Eternally Within Us” enlists the aid of the talented Vicken Studios Orchestra to unleash unrelenting fury. The song never quits on Pietrangelo’s thoughtfully crafted piano arrangements, and repeated listens will reveal just how effective they are to a great listening experience. “The Beneath” evokes early Cradle of Filth, with ear-splitting shrieks being driven by the precision of Brown’s blast beats.
Things take a more interesting turn with the title track, which would fit on a Tribunal record just as well as it fits here. The classical inspirations rear their beautiful fucking heads on the song until it turns into something much slower and darker. Meanwhile, further down, “Perpetual Chasm of Black Mirrors” may have accidentally invented a new subgenre that I’m calling “symphonic sludge” until further notice.
The brilliance of this album is captured most memorably in the closing track, “This is Not Home.” It’s a seven-minute journey that somehow manages to put jarring staccato riffs exactly where they belong, interspersed with the telltale blast beats and unpredictable song structure. The song almost tries to cram too many ideas in, but the clean-sung passages break up the chaos at just the right time.
All told, Home is a blackened testament to how songwriting matters just as much as musicianship. Where other symphonic black metal bands might be content to throw every page in the Necronomicon straight to your ear canal at once, Vesseles shines by favoring quality over quantity.
https://vesseles.bandcamp.com/album/home
https://www.facebook.com/vesseles/