Felgrave - Otherlike Darknesses

Angry Metal Guy

When a promo doesn’t adequately prepare you for what an album will sound like, one of two things is usually the case. Either the promo is poorly written, or the music is particularly description-defying. The promo for Felgrave’s sophomore, Otherlike Darknesses, while well-written, was insufficient to convey the music’s especially idiosyncratic nature. Despite the forewarnings that it “[melds] doom, black, and death metal in a way rarely done before,”¹ and contains “intense and complex parts that wouldn’t be out of place on a technical death metal album,” Otherlike Darknesses is far stranger and deeper than expected.

In a fashion mimicking the genre of Felgrave’s early work—doom—Otherlike Darknesses consists of just three songs, each titanic in scope. But rather than steadily constructing towers of hefty riffs and crescendoing melodies, these songs erratically climb up and down the steep walls of already ruined castles, throwing the listener off the edge of a parapet to crash to earth or float down with chilling grace. Without abandoning compositional coherence, themes are not so much reprises as tethers that bind chaos into monstrous complex wholes. The twisted dissonance of guitars—accelerating and contorting discomfortingly, chirruping like alarms (“Winds Batter My Keep”), and walking in jerky rhythms—over a backdrop of variously whooshing and moaning synths (“Pale Flowers Under an Empty Sky”) is both confrontational and horribly transfixing. It’s a sound so vibrantly reminiscent of Thantifaxath, that I felt the need to confirm multiple times that no affiliation exists between them and Felgrave. But this similarity is only one side of Otherlike Darknesses. In a way that seems to amplify distress, Felgrave incorporate ample use of cleans and disquieting calm. While the latter heightens tension insidiously, the former do so overtly, as belted-out, half-sung wails, often multi-tracked until they are noisier than the instrumentation, or eerily intoned as a softly repeated refrain (“Pale Flowers…”). And yet, amidst the horror, there is also strange elegance and heart.

Otherlike Darknesses by FELGRAVE

Otherlike Darknesses is an intense listening experience. The moaning, discordant cries and throaty screams that narrate it respectively ring with haunting strangeness, and drip with malevolence. The endlessly shifting, slowing down, speeding up, lurching cacophony of tremolos and plucks and impossibly fast and flexible drums contains barely a few minutes of (relative) calm in all its near-50, and even these are menacing thanks to the cruel shifts between harmony and dissonance (“Pale Flowers…,” “Otherlike Darknesses”), and the spiderlike wanderings of fretless bass prominent against stripped-back ambience (“Winds Batter…”). It is nauseating and jaw-droppingly brilliant. Felgrave aren’t throwing things haphazardly at the wall to show off or shock; the pieces that appear scattered fit together into grand, compelling compositions, no matter how unconventional. It’s impressive and terrifying, given the wild places they go, just how easily and how organically Felgrave maintain such coherence. How a diabolical chaos can hide the subtle theme that hums in a later synth and manifests again as gut-clenching a series of chords (“Winds Batter…” “Otherlike Darknesses”); how a stillness can turn so quickly into a storm and singing fall into place so naturally beside them both (“Pale Flowers…). When at last, a mournful melody blossoms (“Otherlike Darknesses”) its brevity and natural fulfilment of its origins make it precious and magnificent. The acrobatic, terrifying things M.L Jupe is doing with guitars, and the profound distinction and interplay between the synths, creeping bass, and manic treble is frightening and wonderful, and never feel self-indulgent. The drumming—courtesy of Robin Stone (Evilyn, Norse)— is as insanely good as it is insane; often inhumanly fast, presciently dynamic, and in constant evolution.

In spite of my awe, it would be remiss not to admit that Otherlike Darknesses is still a bit much.² Due to its structure, one must endure its itinerant movements without even the brief respite that comes from such music being split into more, shorter songs, and this can prove a little exhausting, considering their calibre. Felgrave’s clever weaving of disparate elements create just enough order to maintain integrity, and slips into snatches of quiet and melody just in time, and so manages to keep the derangement from becoming overwhelming. The congruence that this album possesses is, admittedly, of the sort grasped better through patience and repeated listens, but unlike many such unusual extreme metal works, its assets are so immediately transparent they make for powerful motivators to take up this mantle.

Otherlike Darknesses proved to be the best kind of surprise. Though following its trajectory can be daunting, Felgrave has created an experience that is consuming and thrilling enough to make that journey far easier than one might expect. Twisted and scary, but human and graceful, and nonchalantly epic, it’s not something I’ll soon forget.

Rating: Very Good
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: April 25th, 2025

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