REVIEWED: GAEREA - 'HOPE SHATTERS' (SINGLE)

From cash-hungry Hollywood directors churning out mass market-pleasing horror remakes to formerly quick-witted comedians dumbing down their material in a desperate bid for mainstream acclaim, history has more than abundantly illustrated the stifling ill-effects of imposing control and limitations on one’s art. And as a band whose genre-shattering fusion of frantically blasting aggression and wintry, elegantly unfurling atmospherics stems from a place of unbridled self-expression, Gaerea have long made a compelling case for operating on such creatively liberated terms. A feat certainly not easily achieved within the frequently elitist and stubbornly inflexible parameters of black metal.

Yet, as a recent press release highlighted in respect to the sound of the pioneering Portuguese collective circa 2024, this aforementioned enticing yet oftentimes problematic subgenre is but one piece in a sonic configuration more devilishly intricate in design that of the iconic diabolical puzzle box featured in ’80s cult horror classic Hellraiser. Indeed, much like Barker’s infamous, interdimensional Hell portal, new single ‘Hope Shatters’ is a brutal and utterly beguiling artefact, it’s tidily concise, seven-minute runtime housing a host of torturous, ornately orchestrated wonders all but begging to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting listener. With its colossal implosions of battering blasts and larynx-scalding howls finding impeccable placement in amongst meticulously interwoven strains of expansive, sleekly unravelling riffery and frost-stricken tremolo, lead single ‘Hope Shatters’ comprises an impeccably cohesive feat of sonic alchemy.

Delving still deeper into this ever-twisting, nocturnal labyrinth of mind-bending compositional paradoxes, and we’re instantly engulfed in the incendiary, melancholia-steeped orchestrations of apocalyptic B-side ‘World Ablaze’. Of exquisitely gleaming, opalescent atmospheres and ghoulishly reverberating fretwork occupying the precise same compositional space as unfathomably frantic episodes of brutalising extreme metal. A disparate, seemingly improbable pairing on paper, by all accounts. And yet, with these synapse-scorching dynamics finding a tone and rhythm complementary to its myriad layerings of elegantly cascading, yet audibly tortured fretwork, Gaerea have here crafted a thing of bleakly beautiful and savage enormity.

If all this can be achieved within a mere two singles-worth of blistering, hauntingly magnetic extreme metal, imagine the sights they still have yet to show us when 2024 full-length ‘Coma’ finally drops this October!

'Coma' is out 25th October 2024 via Season of Mist