Style: Post Black Metal, Blackgaze (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alcest, Cult of Luna, Sylvaine
Review by: Andy
Country: South Africa
Release date: 11 November, 2022
Back when life was simpler, when I began to delve deeper into the world of metal in middle school, I had one primary metric to measure whether a band was for me or not: Do they have good guitar solos? If that answer yielded a yes, the band was for me–it was as simple as that. Now, I have internalized rubrics and mental maps of every aspect of a band’s sound even during more passive listening. In fact, if it weren’t for the father/son solo on “Merkurius Gilded” (the Kenny G and Max Gorelick in Imperial Triumphant), I probably couldn’t even tell you my solo of the year anymore. I turned on Constellatia because pretty album covers are a weakness of mine, and my first listen exploded with color, vibrancy, and power that I want from the pretty backing of -gaze genres. So why’d I start my review talking about guitar solos?
Magisterial Romance has some phenomenal solos, obviously. They’re what I picked up on during my first listen of the album, and those solos bring the explosively colorful album blooming to life like the cover art. Take, for instance, the first song, “Palace,” when at about 6:30 a triumphant solo bursts forth from the shimmery blackened and post metal section–the trem-picked section in the middle of the solo stood out as particularly spectacular and as a relatively uncommon technique utilization. But after the solo, the track is plaintive and boring as blackgaze often is in between more biting moments. When Constellatia plays around with metal textures, they’re quite adept at simultaneously playing the heart strings; conversely, the languid, post rock and shoegaze segments snuck between blast beats and trem-picks are particularly weak moments across Magisterial Romance.
This struggle between powerful but beautiful melodies and less engaging, quieter parts has plagued blackgaze for well over a decade now: This is what keeps the genre fairly stagnate and why most everything sounds like some iteration of Alcest. To keep the textures and style of the genre requires a fairly limited toolset. Constellatia supplements their brand of blackened shoegaze with strong echoes of post metal with many calmer segments and vocals sounding not too far off of Cult of Luna, and while I appreciate the attempts at expanding the genre’s sound, Constellatia do not flat-out succeed in these moments as waiting for the next solo or explosion of black metal drumming becomes a time-biding game.
But boy when those segments hit, they hit. “Paean Emerging” finishes the album with the best payoff for the time lost by the post noodling that it could. The song begins with black metal; then, a beautiful solo turns into distortionless trems which transition into a horrifying black metal scream, and that turns into a furious, climactic storm. For all the moments I feel a strong breeze could blow away the lackluster post sections, the band pretty much makes up for it with the howling finale.
A slightly dry, cold production really holds the album back the most; more warmth would make the less active sections more inviting to listen to–my mind only wanders so much during them because they feel disinviting even though the writing during them isn’t all that poor on its own. For instance, the ending of “Adorn” has a highlight retro synth arpeggio while de-crescendoing that stands up with more energetic moments. While Magisterial Romance falls victim to many of the classic blackgaze blunders, it also tries to expand upon the sound a little bit. And, of course, the album has some ass-kicking, awesome solos. Perhaps my general non-affinity for blackgaze colors my take on the album too much, but I highly recommend Magisterial Romance if you have a greater affinity toward the style.
Recommended tracks: Palace, Paean Emerging
You may also like: An Abstract Illusion, Asunojokei
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Season of Mist – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook
Constellatia is:
– Gideon Lamprecht (guitars, vocals?)
– Keenan Oakes (vocals, bass?)
1 Comment