Alraune came up out of an already fertile local scene in Nashville and siphoned off some of the city's brightest musical talents to join their crusade. After signing with Profound Lore on the strength of a demo, their debut album is a tour de force, and the quartet have made it clear that they're exactly the sort of band that deserves a leg up out of obscurity. The album eases in with a chiming, distorted, medieval-sounding intro before diving straight into the fracas; the songs are structured in unexpected, interesting ways, and as wimpy as the "atmospheric" or "progressive black metal" tags can be, Alraune give them some much-needed bite. This is raw, cathartic black metal devoid of pretension or compassion, but it does allow itself a few liberties in its pursuit of the greater evil.
Drummer Tyler Coburn (also of Yautja and Gnarwal) plays a crucial role in the band, and he's one of the most present metal drummers out there right now. Every kick, every fill, every perfectly calibrated beat sends tremors through the songs, muscling in on the guitars’ traditional supremacy with a dazzling display of talent and ingenuity. As much as Alraune worships black metal’s purest forms, Tyler’s jazz-influenced drum style adds a skittering, unpredictable quality to the recording that renders it experimental by default. It livens up the otherwise colorless interludes in the deceptively languid “Simulcra”, slashes through corpsepainted melodies with technicolor streaks on the title track, and easily keeps pace with the ferocious guitar work on album highlight “Kissed By The Red”.
“The Process of Self-Immolation” is the most straightforward track on the album, with its driving tempo, unhinged howls, and icy Second Wave tremolo that bleeds into crystalline melodic leads. The inhuman level of control Coburn holds over the rhythm section cows J. Weilburg's tectonic bass into a supporting role without smothering its propulsive hum, and gives the guitar free rein to buck and howl without impunity. The album's other crown jewel, "Exordium", is positively explosive, as Z. Allen and J. House pound out the chords in a dual frenzy, twisting and tearing through one another's work while preserving a wild kind of cohesion. Stern, clenched-teeth threefold vocalizations complete the sonic tableau, issuing forth from the corroded throats of Allen, Weilburg, and House to wax hoarse and commanding in equal measure.
The album only sports five tracks and could've stood to include at least one more song, if only because five just isn't enough. But The Process of Self-Immolation is a thoroughly impressive debut, one that successfully bridges the gap between the black metal of old and its newer incarnations without sacrificing any of the darkness or the strangeness that makes the genre so great. Alraune has hit upon something special here, and deserves your undivided attention.
