Wraithlord - Phantasmal Warfare (Self-released)
Phantasmal Warfare is the eighth full-length album by raw black metal (BM) act Wraithlord, but the first to register a blip on my radar—and only because I initially mistook the old-world battle art for a new Vassus record. A grave error on my part, as the duo outhustle their peers with a quirky and quicksilver style that upstages the usual lo-fi tape hiss aesthetic with ballsy songwriting and a gauntleted fistful of stropped, sawtooth riffs. Simply put, this is raw BM for people tired of raw-BM tropes—but who also like to play air guitar. Tracks like “Konradin” and “Master of the Whores” unleash lyrical Celtic fretwork in the same vein as Bogside Sniper Squadron’s guerilla retro-death/thrash, albeit more blackened in its commitment to the so-called ‘dark ages.’ It’s no surprise that Wraithlord share a member with folk BM heroes Baazlvaat; both projects filter Scots-Irish tradition through a kvlt lens. Some agonist lo-fi BM flagellants might be repelled by the relatively shellacked bedroom production, but Wraithlord make hay by juxtaposing that glaze against a bevy of analog cantrips, whose creepy and colorful timbres sound like intro music for a mana-drunk druid trained in both the dark arts of Mgła and the dazzling parlor tricks of Noble Dechet. Each school of magic lends greater danger for the diversity of this spellbinding attack: the night-stalking Transylvanian organ ostinato on “Raktakunda” wouldn’t sound nearly as fiendish, nor the acoustic finger-picking on “Glistening Tiamat'' as sylvan, without this ongoing melee between major and minor arcana. This ragtag, bohemian approach to songwriting, and the prolific use of synths, suggests that Wraithlord are offering their own quarterstaff and shield alongside contemporaries like Esoctrilihum, Calderum, and Kommodus in the long crusade to expand raw BM’s stylistic borders. Loyal acolytes of these projects should find much to like here.