Hands and knees grasping earth
My first interaction with Krallice was right in the middle of my adolescent years and exactly at the time when my perception of black metal was taking form. Hence, looking at a band with colored contemporary art, a rounded logo and an arguably anti-frostbitten sound was a challenge to the traditionalist establishment on hold of the genre, which still didn't stop me from exploring the band when the self-titled album (2008) and Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009) were released.
As the years passed, I have to admit I lost track of them rather quickly, and haven't poured enough attention to anything they have put out after Diotima (2011) - there are simply too many full-length albums for me to follow.
For that reason, and for the fact that Dimensional Bleedthrough was the first (and maybe last) album that truly stuck to me, I immediately think of this one release when news on Krallice surfaces. Even more specifically, it's the forlorn riffing at the first minutes of "Aridity" that lingers in my head for a good 15 years now - I know, it's a limited view on the artist to have considering their vast discography. Nobody is perfect, except that cat on the roof.
The act of listening became a mode of dwelling within sound, a letting-be of characteristics that disclose black metal Being through aesthetics and sound, instead of subsuming under its preconceived norms.
Guitars shimmer with a spectral harmonic thickness that resists the typical hostility of the genre, embodying intensity in pulse and retreat through oscillations of lighter and darker passages, but no violence in the traditional sense.
There is calculative thinking in the progressions and the amount of repetition in the compositions, which are all together dense, polyphonic, and persistent towards memorability. Krallice's horizon continually evades closure as the rhythmic interplay of mood, space and temporality unfolds on Dimensional Bleedthrough.
The first two tracks (the self-titled one and "Autochthon") immediately seek climax through the aforementioned persistence, intentionally bringing patterns to the spotlight just for them to be deconstructed and replaced. The 14-minute opus "Aridity" will forever be one of my favorite tracks by them, or of modern black metal more generally, but right after it is the shortest and most aggressive piece "The Mountain", which is as close to typicality in patterns Krallice came on the record.
A grandeur of thunderous melodies, achieved from thoughtful expanse, alongside a sense of exploration of unknown possibility instead of documenting certainty, goes on with "Intraum" and "Untitled".
It is tempting to over-analyze technical feats, like the tremolo layers, the polymetric drifts or the vocal timbres, but it's a more profound force that beats blood into the album. It's almost as if the band truly actualizes the liminal title of "Dimensional Bleedthrough". Meaning is not delivered in measured fragments, instead the music feels like it saturates into an ambient field of presence, with sparks of inventive black metal melodies played in a genuinely avant-garde manner.
The last track, "Monolith of Possession", fully depletes the band's energy in its 18 minutes of duration, so that all is given into the work when everything's done. Whenever I listen to it, I contemplate on properly listening to their more recent and many albums, but it somehow never happens. Until that day, here we are.
4 out of 5 [Excellent]
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