GAEREA

GAEREA has been making noise for a decade; hyperactive from their inception. The enigmatic entity's fifth full-length, "Loss", is an album that showcases their ongoing and unyielding evolution, which is accessible without being overtly compromising. The Portuguese quintet started out as a conventional black metal outfit, morphing significantly to encompass the spacious soundscapes of post-rock and post-black metal. With "Loss", the collective remains intentionally as mysterious as they can be with their masked "uniforms," and there is an abundance of soaring, powerful melodic singing that broadens their sound tremendously toward more mainstream metal pastures.

Comparisons to NEUROSIS aren't entirely off base. The sound is expansive and reaching, but the similarity pretty much ends right there. GOJIRA is probably a more appropriate reference point with their shared "big sound" and trade-offs between refined brutality and soulful melodies. The album's opener "Luminary" is chock-full of massive drums and riffs, not entirely removed from what one would expect from a djent or modern prog metal band. There is hardly any black metal at all on this track.

"Hellbound", meanwhile, flips between gargantuan heft and swelling, atmospheric guitar work accompanied by high velocity percussion. There is much needed reprieve from the more potent assault with the melodic chorus that maintains the preceding heaviness while adding notable texture.

Later, the ambience of "LBRNTH" stands out with its perfunctory value as an interlude as well as being a good track on its own, augmented with delicate female crooning. In spite of the expected and desirable histrionics of aggressive extreme metal, like hardcore vocals and biting and blasting rage, GAEREA feels a bit too controlled and polished. A song like "Nomad" or "Stardust", the latter of which is rich with piano and distant whispers, round out the release, yet again touching upon the dichotomy of "soft and hard," finally striking with intense blast beats. Unfortunately, the trappings of extreme metal, even though executed with precision, come off as cosmetic. Everything feels more SLEEP TOKEN rather than MAYHEM, nor a blend of the two vastly disparate realms.

"Loss" is a collection of well-constructed songs that stand on their own but make more sense holistically as part of a broader movement. The album merges grit, melody and emotional vulnerability. GAEREA is quite the proposition: a band with black metal roots that has traveled well beyond the underground, now fully embracing the spirit of metalcore in many ways. They have the potential to appeal to fans of BEHEMOTH as well as AS I LAY DYING without sounding like anyone else.