Review: Rhûn – Conveyance in Death

On Rhûn’s debut there are many ideas fighting for their moment to shine, but the band doesn’t quite know how to tie them together into cohesive songs, even less so an album. This is engaging for the listener as the atmosphere never gets stale, but it doesn’t allow for real emotional payoff.

Introduction

Band: Rhûn
Album: Conveyance in Death
Country: United States of America
Genre: Black Metal
Label: Independent
Data released: January 26th, 2024

Rhûn is a Portland black metal project founded by Aaron Charles in 2021. Charles has had some success throughout the 2000s with his other band, Falls of Rauros, another black metal project named after Tolkien. The first question one might have is: what’s the purpose of this new project? Falls of Rauros is still active and released an album as late as 2022. Two Tolkien inspired black metal bands, what’s the difference?

When looking into the musical quality of the two bands, the difference becomes more apparent. While Falls of Rauros plays Agalloch style folk black metal with many consonant melodies and acoustic passages, Rhûn seems to exist for Charles to explore his songwriting skills outside the expectations of his other band. And like an exercise it feels. The styles on this album fluctuate from Immolation’s vein of dissonant metal to frantic riffing in the style of Immortal and atmospheric melodies more common to American black metal. One moment Rhûn might be playing bittersweet melo-black and on the next song Paradise Lost inspired gothic metal. There’s hardly a unifying structure or flow to the album, which leaves it feeling more like a collection of songs. Although the songs, for what it’s worth, are quite good.

The Album

Tracklist

  1. Morningstar
  2. Tomb of Andesite
  3. Bone Ornament
  4. Howl of Gleaming Swords
  5. Citadels in Ruin
  6. Night’s Glacial Passing

Conveyance… kicks off with the six-minute Morningstar. The guitars chug oppressively while some reverb notes hang above them. The song has a linear song structure, moving from a passage to another and building momentum progressively, making this one of the highlights on the album. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Charles succumbs to one of the biggest pitfalls of metal songwriting. He halts the momentum early on and restarts the song with a new chugging riff in the middle, which disrupts the flow. This time the riff goes nowhere, and the song is forced to restart again with an atmospheric chord progression which finishes the song. While the individual riffs are nice, the song falls apart under scrutiny.

I think Morningstar summarises the album as a whole. There are many ideas fighting for their moment to shine, but Charles doesn’t quite know how to tie them together into cohesive songs, even less so an album. Tonally the songs are sometimes brutal, other times confused or sad. This is engaging to the listener as the atmosphere never gets stale, but it doesn’t allow for real emotional payoff.

The album reaches its high point on Howl of Gleaming Swords. This should have clearly been the closer or the song before the closer, as it is both epic and coherent, with memorable themes repeating throughout the seven-minute song. Howl… demonstrates the strength of Rhûn’s melody writing: the lead melodies are instantly recognisable and emotionally poignant.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Rhûn as it’s evident that the project is just about someone playing stuff that he likes and expanding his writing abilities, which I’m all for. Many of the melodic ideas here are excellent, and I have high expectations for what Rhûn can do in the future once the writing becomes more refined and Charles figures out the right tone he wants to have with the project.

BMZ Rating: a 7 out of 10 (Good: The album is enjoyable and well-crafted. It demonstrates strong songwriting, production, or performances, and has a cohesive sound. It offers a satisfying listening experience.)

Your Thoughts?

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Support the band here: Conveyance in Death | RHÛN (bandcamp.com)

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