Review: Alicia Cordisco – The Burden of I

Artwork by: Sam Nelson

Style: Black Metal, Melodic Black Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Enisum, Emperor, Fer de Lance
Country: United States (Arizona)
Release date: 5 September 2025

The weather is (presumably) getting colder. Soon the leaves will turn; pumpkin spice is already upon us as capitalism fights to distract us from its hand in the erosion of our seasons in a ruthless and small-minded pursuit of profit over preservation. As I sit here in the eighty-degree October sun, reminiscing about crisp autumnal days, my mind wanders to the frostiest of metal’s subgenres: black metal. Something about the ferocious tremolos, ripping blast beats, and throat-shredding vocals—not to mention its propensity for nature and nihilism—feels intrinsic to our colder months. Even as the subgenre has expanded to include post-black, blackgaze, and other whorls of metal’s multitudinous carapace, practitioners like Svalbard and Deafheaven have always carried glimmers of that icy heart.

Not even the dry heat of Arizona can temper black metal’s frigid origins, as evidenced by one-woman band, the eponymously named Alicia Cordisco, and her sophomore album The Burden of I (following 2013’s The Existential Frame). Boasting credentials as a founding member of progressive power metal outfit Judicator, Cordisco’s (Transgressive, Justicar, Wraithstorm, ex-Apophenia, among others) shift from golden-hued adventuring to blackened melancholy is of particular interest. A lone wanderer divorced of guild, how will Cordisco fare with nothing but her own gumption to carry her across the heat-baked Arizona plains?

Surprisingly well, based on my time with The Burden of I. Cordisco wears black metal like a weathered cloak of darkest night, absorbing the blazing sun and silencing it like a musical solar eclipse. Blast beats, tremolo assaults, and a bellowing, attention-grabbing rasp (courtesy of session vocalist Vanessa Funke), Cordisco walks these frost-bitten roads with the self-assuredness of a genre veteran, delivering on the glacial musicianship emblematic of the genre’s Norwegian heights. Yet this is no simple second-wave worship; like Kratos’ transition from Ancient Greece to the Nordic Nine Realms, when Cordisco rolls into town, she does so carrying the might and fury of her power metal past. All throughout The Burden of I, flurries of adventurous guitar work abound, glorious leads and harmonies guiding the listener on this stark and forlorn quest. I’m reminded in ways of a more acerbic Fer de Lance with how songs twist and swell from shadowy dangers to glory-seeking heights (“No Tomorrow That Matters,” “After My Death”). The way Cordisco interweaves blackened gnashing with trad-metal fare is seamless, creating a fun, invigorating tapestry of sorcerous design, like a necromancer’s epic recounted in dim and dolorous halls—often highlighted with a grand solo to really send home the feeling of a journey taken and character grown.

However, swing a sword enough times at a target, and eventually even the most enchanted steel will begin to dull. The Burden of I is a fine and fun record, executed with aplomb, but, despite courting only four tracks, the album’s thrust begins to falter around the halfway mark. This isn’t from a sudden drop in quality—every song is winsome in its own right. The issue is with memorability. Everything on The Burden of I is good, yet nothing across the thirty-seven-minute runtime manages to get its hooks in particularly deep. Perhaps that’s a ubiquity issue with black metal; maybe a focus on shorter, hookier tracks would help, though Cordisco’s long-form pacing is solid. Or, perhaps I’ve simply become calcified from listening to so much music, thus making it harder for bands to chip deeper into my shell.

Whatever the case, the fact is such: Alicia Cordisco’s sophomore outing is a stalwart one, full of confident musicianship and an ear for dramatic, heroic sonics dredged from black metal’s frozen depths and called down from power metal’s lofty peaks. While I struggled at times to stay on the footpath Cordisco laid out, The Burden of I is hardly burdensome to warrant avoidance. There’s plenty of exciting finds along the way, and those surer-footed than I may discover hitherto unforeseen pathways to whisk them away on this benighted journey. When next Miss Cordisco blows into town, I’ll be ready with an open ear… and perhaps a sturdier pair of footwear.

Recommended tracks: No Tomorrow That Matters, Better Off Forgotten
You may also like: Eternal Valley, Asagraum, Aristarchos, Frozen Dawn
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Independent

Alicia Cordisco is:
– Alicia Cordisco (guitars, bass, keyboards, songwriting)
With guests:
– Vanessa Funke (vocals)
– Brett Windnagle (drums programming)