Contemplation – S/T Review

Bands that are challenge kind of trick, and amaze, me. I don’t know if it is for the reason I’m still a beginner at the Extreme Metal arts, but I find very interesting all the combinations and mixes bands are doing these days. Many will slam me, but I guess this is a moment of a boiling creativity in Metal music. It’s not for what I heard with this new project Contemplation and their self-tittled album, but for what I’ve been lisitening during this five year experience I’m having here with you and Metal Addicts.

The combination of features and textures is very rich and complex here. First of all, I though that in the album opener “Pagan Immersion” it was a fiddle, not a violin. By the way, the violin can be felt in many tracks of “Contemplation.” The instrument gives an ethereal mood to the music and helps giving the post-modern atmosphere the band wants to create. It’s interesting that the violonist changes techniques throughout the album giving it a deeper meaning. This intro is pretty cool and gives a decent idea of what is to come; a complex and diversified Extreme Metal. The general mood in the album is a combination of Doom and Death Metal with the aforementioned doses of Symphonic. The outcome is really amazing. Contemplation managed pretty well to have a balance between the wild side and the more instrospective facete of the band. Besides all that, the band uses lots of nature’s sounds to give the album that soundscape that so many bands are joining. This post-modern Black Metal is a reality. We’ve received some albums with this paradoxal, and unexpected version of Black Metal. I said paradoxal because I guess this nature’s contemplation and worshipin doesn’t fit too well. But, musicwise it creates very interesting layers of music and ideas. It’s Metal music going beyond all its boundaries and crystalized beliefs. I’d say that “Contemplation” pushed those boundaires farther than expected and got pretty near a progressive verve. If I didn’t know this facete of Black Metal I’d say it were a Progressive Metal album because it’s not only the violins but the extension of the songs and the mix with a more progressive way of writing. Take a look at the saxophone in “Vicious Circle” and tell me about it. Pretty progressive, huh?

“Contemplation” is an album to give a very serious thought. It pushes all the boundaries we all know to a place we don’t know yet. Let’s wait and see.

Contemplation S/T was released in October.

Track Listing:

  1. Pagan Immersion
  2. Gaia at Night
  3. The Contemplators
  4. Vicious Circle
  5. Gaia under Attack
  6. Vital Forces
  7. The Road That Leads Nowhere
  8. Funeral Desert of Doom