Svnth - Spring In Blue

Angry Metal Guy

The folks over at Genre Names ‘R’ Us really painted themselves into a corner when they started applying the “post” prefix. Post-rock, post-hardcore, post-metal, it all keeps the emphasis on deconstructing the previous genre while implying that whatever follows would by default be post-post, which is of course stupid. I blame post-modernism. Modernism, in all its various cultural applications, was so self-important that when all that utopic theorizing crashed back to earth and splintered into shards, people could only squint at the mess and say “Let’s call this ‘The Thing That Comes After Modernism.'” And ok, it makes sense. You always have to deal with the aesthetics and ideas that preceded yours no matter how radical you think you’re being, but by making the focus of your creation the deconstruction of the thing that came immediately before, you put a time limit on how fresh your own ideas are. All bands are post-something by nature of artistic creation, but you can always tell when one voluntarily takes on the label. Italian blackgaze outfit Svnth bears the mantle proudly, but is their take fresh? If history has indeed ended, does it matter?

Spring In Blue is the second full-length from Svnth—short for their previous name Seventh Genocide—and it packs a lot of post into its 61 minutes. There are clear nods to GSY!BE in the long, minimal progressions of “Erasing God’s Towers” and “Parallel Layers,” gauzy shoegaze vocal harmonies and guitar melodies in “Wings of the Ark” and a healthy dose of post-black tremolo riffs and blast beats interspersed throughout the atmospheric undulations. With the exception of those “Wings of the Ark” cleans, courtesy of guest singer Marco Soellner, all vocals are handled by bassist Rodolfo Ciuffo, whose harsh blackened bark is mixed slightly back from the melodic but punchy riffs and guitar leads. There’s plenty of signature post-rock quiet/loud/quiet throughout Spring In Blue, but the blasts are well integrated and have enough bite to satisfy the patient metal head. Underpinning all of this is an obvious appreciation for the proto-post¹ of 70’s krautrock and prog.

The songs on Spring In Blue go a lot of places, and they never get to them quickly, but Svnth‘s consistent strength is an ability to make each section engaging on its own. there are minimal, meandering guitar lines echoing in empty space, mid-paced rock grooves and searing tremolo riffs. Textural shifts are as important to the album’s success as tempo and volume variation, with a satisfying twang in the front half slowly giving way to dream pop haziness by closer “Sons of Melancholia.” The quieter moments are bolstered by the fact that when Svnth pivots to blackened blasting, the riffs can hold their own against many a more straight-forward black metal band, especially on the 14 minute highlight “Chaos Spiral In Reverse.” Long songs are the rule rather than the exception, with four of six tracks passing 10 minutes, but the shorter and punchier “Wings of the Ark” is well placed in the center of the album. The track features a nice balance between fervent blasts and shoegaze languor that the longer cuts tend to lose in their meanderings.

Anyone familiar with the tropes of post-rock/metal/black won’t be surprised to find lots of them on Spring In Blue, but that adherence to compositional faffing and other genre conventions is also a reason to temper expectations. Svnth may mix a few styles together, but they’re all squarely in that deconstruct-y “post” family. There are no surprises here if you’ve followed the genre developments since the 90s, and nothing is handled with such subtlety that the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. This may be why the album feels overlong. Purposeful aimlessness is to be expected, but as the repeated guitar refrain at the end of even short track “Wings of the Ark” suggests, there’s fat to trim all over the album.

Fans of the somewhat unfairly maligned blackgaze genre as well as of atmospheric post-rock in general will find a lot to like in Svnth‘s second full-length. It does nothing to reinvent the genre that reinvented the wheel, sticking closely at every deconstructed turn to what came before, but it’s all well executed. “Wings of the Ark” and “Chaos Spiral In Reverse” are clear highlights, but each track has engaging moments. There are definitely worse things you could listen to as you wait for whatever comes after “post” to arrive.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Records
Websites: seventhgenocide.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/seventhgenocide
Releases Worldwide: August 28th, 2020

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