Krallice - Prelapsarian

Pitchfork 79

Eight years, five albums, and two EPs in, the New York-based outfit Krallice have long since shut up purists about their “hipster black metal.” Their four-man, post-structural assembly line runs at a breakneck pace, taking great care to balance the intricate (Colin Marston and Mick Barr’s interlocking riffs, Lev Weinstein’s head-spinning polyrhythms) with the incendiary (best exemplified by Barr and Nick McMaster’s shared, animalistic vocal duties; the former’s a screaming eagle, the latter a growling hellhound). The quartet frequently capitalize on the element of surprise; Krallice’s last two releases—2015’s Ygg Huur and last winter’s Hyperion EP—dropped spontaneously, a pair of inter-dimensional rifts masquerading as albums, far from the hum of the hype machine. Early last month, the band opened the portal once more to announce their sixth album Prelapsarian, subsequently released sans fanfare on the Winter Solstice.

Upon first glance, Prelapsarian, which the band recorded last summer, may not seem like much. Comprising four tracks and thirty-five minutes, the LP stands just a smidge taller than its predecessor, and sports a similarly dense stylistic template. Fans familiar with the stop-go surges and antiphonal touches of old will undoubtedly appreciate “Transformation Chronicles,” “Conflagration”, and “Lotus Throne,” the album’s staggered, epic triad.

Hyperion’s copious lyrical references to mythology, astrophysics, and nihilistic philosophy belied an obsession with the cosmic. Prelapsarian, by contrast, is the product of a band firmly planted on terra firma, racing against the doomsday clock. Post-election anxiety runs rampant, manifested in everything from the title (derived from the age of humanity’s primordial, Edenic innocence, the original “good old days” before Adam and Eve shared a snack and sealed humanity’s grim fate), to the razed-earth panoramas framing the doomy, eight-minute-long dirge “Conflagration.”

“Hate Power,” is the the album’s highlight: an odd apex, considering it’s only the second track on the album, and clocking in at less than four minutes, the shortest. Krallice songs usually sprawl out across nine, eleven minutes; in these cramped confines, Barr and McMaster stage an epic battle for control as the band totters between d-beat and death metal. Without their usual song length as a cushion, the song feels like a fight to the death in a windowless room. As the song thrashes itself nearly apart, the doomsday-clock ticking desperation is palpable. In their growing catalog, this is a relatively crisp release, a speedy little roller coaster situated alongside the Towers of Terror. But the moment is dense and terrifying enough to make Krallice fans wonder: What could they accomplish with an album of compositions this compact?