Album Review: Rivers Ablaze - Inexternal Dread
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
It is foretold in scriptures ancient even by the standards of time itself that once a year there will come a black metal album that I will fall helplessly in love with. When god said “let there be light!”, lo! There the manuscript lay illuminated; “bald white guy, one a year, trust me bro” in the immaculate cursive of the divine. And so it came to pass – last year I had the pleasure of reviewing Ash Magick’s “Rituals of Anathematic East”, a tour-de-force of unsurpassable blackened genius that effortlessly wrestled it’s way into my top five not just of 2025, but possibly of black metal albums ever. Yet the lone area in which it left any room for genuine critique was that it really didn’t do anything new, so much as do the established black metal blueprint absolutely flawlessly. And I’m not full of myself enough to think that Rivers Ablaze will have read that review and suddenly had their energy bills double when the biggest lightbulb of all time flared into life above their heads; but nonetheless, it does strike me as a whimsical coincidence that here comes a black metal release that has completely enraptured me not through mastery of the fundamentals, but by seeing where it can step beyond them.
This album is superlative. A beautiful, strange animal as sublimely performed as it is composed. Heart stopping, ethereal splendour such as the wondrous melodicism of “Carrion Throne” and it’s closing minutes paired with the ravenous tech-thrash edge of “Lunar Perception”, it’s riffs like a giant squid with machetes for arms flying at you. It resists categorisation except in the most general of terms; yes, it feels more a black metal release than anything else, but the progressive slant to it, the way it works to confound expectations yet somehow retain an identity of it’s own is a breed of sleight of hand that has seen people burned as witches in the past. And yet, there’s taste to all of this too. At least part of it’s strength lies in knowing when best to saunter through the noodly suburbs of prog town, and when to play the favourites. And sometimes, absolutely nothing but neck-spraining black fucking metal will do – which is exactly why 2.37 on “Enemy Within” hits like a like a rabid gorilla with the best Darkthrone riff that Darkthrone never wrote. But pause a moment; there’s more afoot than mere spinal trauma here. Listen to the drums, the sheer amount and variety of fills making sure that each go around only puts more heft into the swing. The double time on the kicks on the last iteration. The band put their entire arse into wringing the absolute most out of each and every moment, nothing is permitted to remain merely “good enough” to satisfy requirements.
I’ve called it beautiful already, but it bears repeating that Rivers Ablaze have penned music of startling grace and poise here. The thought kept recurring; the combination of bullish power, delicacy, forward-thinking progressive instincts, and sheer instrumental prowess prompting it perhaps. But I felt as though if Mastodon were a black metal band, they might sound like this. The same band that churn seas into boiling riots with “Blood and Thunder” or “Spectrelight” and yet also split hearts asunder with the emotional weight of “Ember City”, “More Than I Could Chew” or “Oblivion”. That same diverse power seems invested here, too. “Silent Orbit” is one of the more conventional tracks on offer, but it’s chord progressions are no less magical for it, the harmonies of it’s lead work at 1.16, the forlorn timbre of it’s clean vocals, it’s course and refrain throughout, the euphoric closure as it soars out of earshot on pinions of air-light tremolo. It’s so immersive and instantly catchy, but perches in imperturbable comfort alongside more “out there” flights of experimentation like “A Mass Grave for Trauma” and the curious, irregular timing of it’s riffs and the suppurating wounds through which some death metal and sludge spills to pollute Eden. Yet for all it’s exploratory ranging, the album never loses itself in masturbatory experimentation for it’s own sake. It’s one thing to strike out in search of brave new frontiers in which to pillage, but you can’t just dump a billion different things in a blender and hope for the best. You still have to write actual songs. Beginning, middle, end, parts that make sense together or serve a rational purpose beyond “Haha! There’s an accordion in my djent band now! This song will last for forty two seconds and then we’re doing a haka while making those hand-fart noises! Fear our refusal to stay within coherent boundaries! This song is INTENTIONALLY unlistenable and therefore immune to criticism or projectile vomiting!”. I once saw an interview with some random black metal band saying they had taken “Fucking Hostile” by Pantera and “tilled it like the waiting earth” by adding a ten minute flute section, and I just couldn’t think of anything fucking worse if I tried. There’s a knack to writing more progressive music, is the point. And Rivers Ablaze, as you may have guessed by now, exemplify that knack with an almost arrogant proficiency.
I feel on the one hand obliged to say something like “it’s not perfect” then trawl through the full album to see what wriggling inadequacies I can catch; but I just...don’t really want to. I’m getting too much joy out of it to want to waste a word count searching for morsels to skewer when frankly nothing stood out to me as bad in the first place. Certainly not when I assess this against the overabundance of positive things I have to talk about. It would feel pedantic, pathetic almost, as though I was scowling at the Sistine chapel because it didn’t remember my birthday. So pardon my somewhat abject abdication of my duties, it’s just that every time I reach for a reprimand I recall the bit at 1.43 in “Mirror Trap” where the bass note drops low and underlines the wandering leads with this epochal, gorgeous perfection. I recall the closing of my current frontrunner for song of the year “Carrion Throne”, the way it builds and crescendos, the riff clambering ever higher to this pure enlightened realm of utmost, hair-raising sublimity. The nanometer precision of performance of these complex unfolding tracks that never get lost in inscrutable mazes of density nor feel, for the minutest fraction of an instant, aimless or meandering. The production that allows each instrument space to shine, never drowning one beneath another. If all things have to them some crack or imperfection then fine, so too does “Inexternal Dread”. But what failings it does have are obscured so entirely, so comprehensively, so utterly and completely by the mountainous quantity of things that the band does right that spin after spin flew by and not one flaw revealed itself to me.
It’s far too early to call these things, but if this doesn’t make it on my top five come year end I will be: A – deeply surprised and B – unusually lucky to have heard 5 albums stronger than it. This is fucking fantastic, and whether black metal is your cup of tea or not you have to listen it at least once. So much about it ticks every box I have and some others that I wasn’t aware were on the checklist. I implore you, whatever you’re doing, putting the kids to bed, brain surgery, lockpicking bank vaults, put that shit down and cram this into your ears with all possible alacrity.
