AARA

One of modern black metal's most prolific bands, AARA have only been around since 2018, but the quality of the catalogue they have amassed since debut album "So fallen alle Temple" (2019) speaks for itself. Last year, the Swiss mavericks put the finishing touches to their most ambitious creative push with "Triade III: Nyx": their fifth full-length in as many years, and the last installment of a scintillating trilogy of albums that showcased the ongoing growth and expansion of these doyens of atmospheric BM.

Having completed that twisted and surreal project, guitarist and creative mastermind Berg has committed his focus to more earthly things. "Eiger" is dedicated to the 3,967-foot mountain in the Bernese Alps, and more specifically to the many people that have lost their lives attempting to conquer its icy north face. One incident in particular — a failed attempt by four young mountaineers to scale the north face, nicknamed Mordwand ("murder wall"),in 1936 — provides the album with its hazy, narrative core, but it is the sheer scale and treacherous magnificence of snow-covered Alpine landscapes that most directly informs these songs. "Eiger" is an album of windswept grandeur and festering, sub-zero horror. Lightning-fast and monochrome bleak, these are songs that evoke the vastness of the snow-bound scenery, and the impenetrable darkness that lurks just out of sight.

There are many bands occupying similar territory, but AARA have been a cut above the rest from the start. Atmospheric black metal can often be formulaic and reliant on well-worn tropes, but "Eiger" is anything but lazy. The opening track alone contains emotional multitudes. Nine minutes of blizzard-blind black metal with vocalist Fluss a wild and wicked presence in the foreground, "Die das wilde Wetter fangt" is the musical equivalent of a sustained and bitter wind, rattling through Alpine peaks. Furious blastbeats mutate into melancholy pomp and back again, Fluss howls as if lost in an ice-cold void, and each wave of barbaric riffing is more mesmerizing than the last. Acoustic guitars, which make intermittent appearances throughout, echo into the swirling frost, austere but haunting. On "Senkrechte Welten", Berg's folk-inspired guitar work morphs suddenly into a coruscating wall of guitars, and another whip-quick blastbeat drives everything breathlessly forward, before the tempo drops to an imperious crawl, bittersweet hooks sparkling amid the gloom. It is all meticulously executed, but the underlying truth of AARA's grimly precise methods is that "Eiger" is still a wholly organic and authentic piece of work. Wistful melodies are many, but never overstated. There are occasional moments that could almost be described as upbeat: "Todesbiwak" revels in melodies that are equal parts beautiful and uplifting, albeit always with an strong sense that a lethal (and brutal) avalanche is just around the corner.

This is utterly essential for atmospheric black metal fans, particularly as another potentially vicious winter draws in. "Eiger" ends with "Alptraum": a weirdly accessible but endlessly evocative epic, it seems to mirror the final descent into icy peril that took the lives of those brave but ill-fated mountaineers 88 years ago. Expect chills.