Note the words "Ecstatic Rite", the title of the fifth track on Renihilation, the debut LP from Brooklyn black metal band Liturgy. With its nihilism and necromancy, its demons and doom, heavy metal-- especially this strain-- is most often tagged for its dark, grim obsessions, not its celebration. Liturgy, at a glance, might not seem much different: Frontman Hunter Hunt-Hendrix writes about meaninglessness, disaster, and apocalypse in terse, declarative terms, and the band's guitar waves and drum cascades sometimes suggest suffocation.
But crank Renihilation again, and notice the way Greg Fox rebuilds his beats when the band relents-- how hard he slaps those cymbals, how he slowly fills the spaces in his own meter, especially during the backend of "Pagan Dawn". Or listen to the intensity of "Arctica"-- the triumphant guitar introduction, the thunderous way the drums roll into it, the sudden stops and stronger restarts. It feels, conveniently enough, ecstatic, the sound of four "Brooklyn hipsters" (as some super kvlt Internet analysts have derided) who go by their given names, wear street clothes, and avoid corpse paint treating extreme metal with the élan of a ripe young garage rock band or a focused noise artist. However harsh the words and however heavy the music, Liturgy have fun with their chosen form-- playing ferociously, writing imaginatively, and, in the process, making a record that reveres black metal's legacy while, at its best, pushes it forward.
For, you know, Brooklyn hipsters, the quartet supplies convincing power and precision. They play hard, fast, and with stamina, storming through these seven three-to-five-minute tracks and using only four interludes (always some combination of guitars, electronics and overtone singing) for rest. But it's not all bustle and blaze. There's lot of space in these tracks, so that even the most tumultuous tunes offer surprising detours.
That's actually where Liturgy are the most compositionally interesting. On "Mysterium", for instance, Fox overruns his own frenetic clip, drumming so quickly that all he can do is start and stop again. Each time this happens, Liturgy pause on sharp, dissonant notes, maintaining a pins-and-needles suspense rather than resolving the drama. Liturgy cites minimalist composers La Monte Young and Glenn Branca and Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as influences. The record's interludes are obvious homages to those outsiders, but so are these moments, when Liturgy reinforce the tension with choices that run counter to rock'n'roll impulses. The possibilities are infinite and largely unexplored.
Indeed, one of Renihilation's most appealing aspects is what isn't here: From the dissonant guitar shards anchoring the pauses on "Arctica" to the mix of chants and electronics serving as interludes between tracks, Liturgy deliver a stream of ideas that seem like strands for continued exploration and synthesis. It's a captivating listen in its own right, but mostly Renihilation establishes the band's bona fides. Yeah, maybe they're art kids or the sons of classical music critics, but Fox destroys on the drums, and Hunt-Hendrix suffers for his words when he howls. He and Bernard Gann comprise an interesting guitar pair, too, as comfortable marching along the same serrated path as they are spiraling around each other in riffs and counters. Bassist Tyler Dusenbury mostly stays out of the way. Renihilation suggests that Liturgy are more certain of possibilities than, at this point, their ability to achieve them. That is, despite a frontman who roars, "being shall become the eternal return of fire," during a song in which he depicts the modern world crumbling in a natural blaze, the aggressive ecstasy of Renihilation promises an exciting future-- for Liturgy, and for us.
