EP Review: Viserion - Fire and Blood
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
From time to time I’m lucky enough to come across a book – luckier yet, a series of books – that compels me to just devour it. A Song of Ice and Fire was one of those series. I’ve never seen the TV show outside of a few clips on Youtube – I wanted to read the books before I watched it and I had the temerity to assume that George R R Martin would have finished the writing of them prior to the show concluding. But regardless of the cliffhanger those novels have left me dangling over, they remain some of the most compelling fantasy reading I've ever indulged in - and if you’re talking about bringing a world of such violent glory to life via the medium of black metal then you can just go ahead and hook that shit to my veins. And that, ladies and gentlemen is where we introduce Viserion.
Viserion are unashamed of their second wave influences. And why wouldn’t they be when so much excellence came from it? Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal... the cream of it stands tall amongst the strongest efforts of any other subgenre to this day. He who does not blast “A Blaze in the Northern Sky” as soon as the first cold hints of winter show their faces is no friend of mine. And I think it’s fine to be indebted to your influences; I penned enough frothing reams of praise about last years not-especially-original but regardless phenomenal Ash Magick release after all. You can be obstinately imitative but that’s not to say you can’t be electrifying nonetheless. And there are moments – the heroic evocations of “Harrenhal” in it’s first half dovetailing into an epic, flame-wreathed closure for example – that hit the sweet spot between melody and animosity that a lot of good black metal does. But I think at least in part the reason I’m not helplessly smitten by it does come down to how completely it sulks in the shadow of it’s forbears. I can’t pin down a gargantuan flaw, or even a queue of smaller gripes I could run down and list off with the haughty snarkiness of someone who isn’t having their own creativity judged harshly. It’s more the case that you’ll sit through it going “yep, that sure is a black metal song”. It ticks all the boxes, but never excels in any particular category.
“Fire and Blood” kicks us off with a textbook combination of a simple shifting powerchord pattern into a chunky midpaced bridge. The kick and snare alternate quickly then slow into a gruesome half step alongside the guitars. The solo is atonal madness atop blastbeats. It’s all present and correct but none of speaks to me in any kind of way. Every note fits like an oiled gear into the secnd wave paradigm and steadfastly refuses to do anything outside it. Which wouldn’t necessarily matter if these riffs were all world-beating paragons of the art, but they’re not. You’ve heard all of this a million times even if you’ve only a passing interest in the genre.
It’s all just sort of “there”. Not bad exactly, but nothing held my attention or demanded I return to it. It sounds somehow worse to dismiss a band offhandedly like this than It would if I just despised their work. At least if it generated in me an unsleeping, toxic rage then it would mean that the album made me feel something. But here there’s nothing. I began intrigued by the conceptual foundations of it; Game of Thrones in black metal form – how could I not? I ended feeling this… absence of feeling, if that makes sense. This neutral anhedonic void where emotion – any emotion – used to live. The whole EP slides from the mind undetected like a skilled psychic, and only by purposefully sitting with it to specifically take notes can I by brute force imprint it wilfully into my memory. It winds up looking a bit like this:
1. Blackfyre opens with the same chord progressions as “When the Saints Go Marching in” does, which is a curveball pick for a black metal album to be honest.
2. Harrenhal is kind of a nice closer. Decent melodies.
3. Reign of Fire… exists. It is a thing that happened.
So on and so forth. There’s so little to spotlight that it makes it quite difficult to discuss, and the review – to me at least – feels as though it could be about anyone. But sadly that’s appropriate because if you play any of these songs to me in a year’s time there is not a chance in hell I’ll guess who it is.
Do Viserion have something essential in them? Maybe? You can’t say never with stuff like this. They’re obviously competent – especially their drummer – so the physical ability to manifest a piece of mandatory listening is for sure there. But what’s staying Viserion’s feet here isn’t a failure of instrumental capability, it’s one of imagination. They don’t need to step beyond the searing confines of the 2nd wave but I feel like it would do them the world of good to tiptoe up to the boundaries and sort of peer over the top a little bit. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever see an end to A Song of Ice and Fire. Between George R R Martin’s age, the speed at which he writes, and the sheer amount of plot threads he’s got going, the betting odds are looking ever slimmer. It’s doubly poignant to hear a literary universe that has made me feel so much rendered here in a way that made me feel so little. I won’t pretend to not be downcast over it if we never see a definitive conclusion to the saga, but maybe it’s better that way. The divisive (to put it mildly) ending of the TV show is proof positive that it’s best to leave the audience wanting more if the alternative is flubbing the conclusion. For Viserion though, the issue is flipped in a sense – with the best will in the world, I’m not altogether blown away by this release, so if ever they do decide to try once more bringing this world to life, I hope and pray that they stick the landing with the fire and blood to do it justice.
