(The True) Veiled - In Blinding Presence

Labels: Into Endless Chaos Records

Formats: Vinyl/CD/Tape/Digital

Release Date: 07 Jan 2019

Tracklist:

1. Glaring Brume

2. Triunity

3. The Healing Atter

4. Steps

5. Saintly Aisles

6. Selfchasm

7. Bringer Of Lambency

2018 was dominated by two of extreme metal's most productive sub-genres, death metal and black metal. Focusing on black metal, there was mainstream album from Deafheaven, Marduk and Watain that garnered a lot of attention. Below that bands including Falls Of Rauros, Panopticon and UADA played to ever increasing crowds and both European and UK black metal grew with labels including Avantgarde Music (and sub-label Flowing Downwards), Blackwood Productions and Into Endless Chaos Records releasing lots of underground bands of varying strains. It's the latter, Into Endless Chaos Records that I'm focusing on here as they prepare for the release (tomorrow) of the debut full-length from Germany's (The True) Veiled. "In Blinding Presence" follows on from the mysterious entity's debut 7", which was released last year.

As with much of the black metal I’ve mentioned in my opening paragraph, Veiled being with a short ambient track called Glaring Brume, which is starkly haunting and cold. No sooner has it fallen silent when the noisy metallic ferocity of Triunity springs forth. Its pummelling percussion and driving riffs are set against an orchestral melody and tortured screams/shrieks. Veiled definitely writes and delivers some very rhythmic and (dare I say it) catchy black metal. The Healing Atter, while being shorter, is full of musicality. That and the production make it better too. It’s too easy for bands to settle into the whole noise, lo-fi bedroom project sound, which doesn’t happen here.

That being said, it’s by no means an easy-listening record and Steps is probably one of the blackest songs on “In Blinding Presence”. The vocals are seemingly delivered at random while the instrumentation is off-kilter and jarring, but it all fits together. The riffs at the beginning of Saintly Aisles remain throughout the song, sitting underneath the band’s wall of extremity and gives an alternative edge (if that doesn’t sound too pretentious) to what is already a chaotic beast. What’s also surprising is the amount of music that Veiled can fit in to the song, which is over in under four-and-a-half-minutes. I hear elements of some of the Black Twilight Circle band’s within it too. 

Selfchasm goes by without fuss and in the blink of an eye. It’s another angular demonic hymn that forces itself into the deepest parts of your brain and buries itself. It retains some of those catchy elements from earlier on in the album but its maddening edge of all too obvious. Bringing the album to a close is the lengthy, twisted Bringer Of Lambency, It’s progressive nature and use of repeated structures only reinforce how creative and scary Veiled is as a band. The music ends abruptly leading to an outro as haunting as Glaring Brume at the beginning, though the female singing here is kind of comforting given what you’ve just been through. Judging by this record, we’re in for a truly frightening year of black metal.

You can stream both The Healing Atter and Selfchasm via Veiled's bandcamp page, where the album is available for digital pre-order:-

Physical copies can be ordered from Into Endless Chaos Records here - https://intoendlesschaos.de/

Into Endless Chaos Records - https://www.facebook.com/IntoEndlessChaos/