Review: Massen – Contraesthetic

Style: progressive black/folk metal (mixed, Belarussian male/female vocals)
Review by: Sam
Country: Belarus
Release date: 9 April, 2021

It’s not often I buy the CD for an album before I finish listening to it, let alone when the album is only 35 minutes long. Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever done that. The fact that I bought the CD for this album that quickly surely says something about the impact it had on me. I was just clicking around on metal-archives for good folk/pagan metal releases out of boredom, wondering if I’d find something relevant to this blog. A lot of it is straightforward power/black metal with some folky melodies, but there are a couple of artists like Arkona or Moonsorrow who make these epic, dynamic compositions that rival anything a band like Opeth put out in terms of complexity and scale. A major downside is that the genre is littered with fascism and the like due to questionable origin of pagan symbols and nationalism issues (cries in Nokturnal Mortum). But in terms of emotional peaks, it’s peak music in my opinion. This CD by Massen completely blew my socks off when I sampled it on Bandcamp. It was decently progressive, and as far as I could tell, they were not Nazis, so to the reviewing pile it went, and thus here we are.

Massen (previously known as Massenhinrichtung, German for “Mass Execution”) is a Belarussian band that play folky black metal. The core of their sound lies in melodic black metal, and they amplify it with a folky violin and progressive song structures. Initially a solo project by Aliaksandr Yarmak, the band has evolved to a whopping six members, which gives them a quite busy sound. This is a record that immediately rams its best qualities in your face, that being the extremely intense, emotionally swelling lead work. I was flabbergasted by how incredibly hard it resonated with me emotionally. It’s backed by also very intense black metal instrumentation. After the already gorgeous crescendo of the introduction song, the drums come blasting out of the gate, the riffs are nasty, and the harsh vocals (done by multiple members) are extremely beefy for black metal. Paired with absolutely gorgeous violin play that’s just an instant recipe for success with me. And then they also do female clean vocals in the chorus! I’m in love.

Safe to say I was taken aback by this record. That sort of emotional quality is very rare, and they entranced me almost immediately. There’s nothing gimmicky about their sound either. The meat and potatoes of a metal album, the riffs, are just vicious. You’ve got the icy black metal riffs, the more open-chords folk metal approach (still heavy!), and even death metal-ish aggression throughout. But regardless of what type, the tempo’s always incredibly high. There’s also some top-tier shredding in “A Step to Silence” that while short, is just nasty as fuck. This album makes you do both the stank face and the crying thing, sometimes simultaneously. Because by God, those leads are just incredible. I can’t stress enough how beautiful they are. Often in conjunction with the violin you get this insanely pretty, emotional gut-punch that’s just mesmerizing as fuck.

My description so far might sound rather exhausting, but the album’s actually paced quite well. They made sure to keep the song structures unpredictable by including various lesser intense parts, sometimes even going acoustic. The fourth song “By Water to the Sun” in particular is almost entirely acoustic, focusing instead on the violin player Karalina Nasko and her clean singing. Aside from a short supportive growl in the climax, the song is entirely clean vocals. It’s a great melodic break from the intensity, and it reminds me vaguely of the similarly violin-driven song “Forget Not” by Ne Obliviscaris. The next songs pick the intensity back up where it left off, but keep it just as dynamic and unpredictable as before.

Contraesthetic is not a perfect record however. The most egregious point of contention is easily the mixing. The cymbals are ridiculously loud, and the bass is often inaudible. Even one of the album’s biggest selling points, the violin, is often buried behind the sonic assault of the guitars and drums. It was also only on the ninth listen (!) that I noticed the background vocals in “A Step to Silence” (rather ironic, isn’t it?). Another unfortunate aspect of this album is its flow. Usually it flows really well, but why the second song “Cold Clouds” has a grand finale and why the title track closer just ends unceremoniously is beyond me. Lastly as a more minor nitpick I found that Karalina’s vocals in the more metal songs to be rather lacking in variety. She has one approach for those parts, and while that’s a great approach, it’s still only one approach. It sounded like she also struggled to be audible amidst the sonic metal onslaught.

All things considered though, Contraesthetic is an absolute winner of an album. It has some issues in its flow and poor mixing choices, but otherwise this is just some next-level stuff. The sheer emotional intensity of the lead-work alone was enough to sell me on the record, but in combination with this songwriting I’m just mind blown. I also wanted to discuss the lyrics somewhere (which the band sent me an English translation of), but this review is long enough as is. I don’t know about you, but this will definitely end up high on my eventual album of the year list.

Recommended tracks: Cold Clouds, By Water to the Sun, Contraesthetics Pt. 1
Recommended for fans of: Arkona, Moonsorrow, Ensiferum, Ne Obliviscaris
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Vkontakte | Metal-Archives page

Label: Apostasy Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook

Massen is:
– A.E.O.N. (harsh vocals, folk instruments, keyboards, guitars)
– Hresvelgr (harsh vocals)
– Aliaksandr Kardymon (guitars)
– Accela (bass)
– Bizo (drums)
– Karalina Nasko (female vocals, violin)