Review: The Great Sea – Noble Art of Desolation

Introduction

If ever there was one truth that is evident in art and music it’s this; A simple concept done well with a few minor things that make it unique will absolutely stand the test of time no matter how much things evolve. Such is the case with the debut offering  from German outfit The Great Sea.

Noble Art of Desolation

Rumination

The Great Sea is formed of instrumentalist duo JR & H (who have recruited guest vocalists for the album including the legend Azathoth from Grab) who play a huge sounding post rock infused atmospheric black metal.

So this release is honestly very uniquely sick and I think it’s because of the background of the 2 artists behind it. From what I can tell they have a pretty extensive background in post rock stuff. Because of that their debut just sounds fucking huge. 

The opening blast on the track The Water Remains when it finally kicks in after the intro is just awesome. 

Music like this seems to find a really solid balance between being tied to European 2nd wave stuff whilst not being a lame copy of it. They seem to really take their background and put it to good use to make something way more interesting than people who don’t have the background in production and atmosphere design would be able to do.

I feel like this band is kind of like Olhava in the sense that they saw what was happening with atmospheric black metal 10 years ago with Throne Room and things like that and they’re basically just building upon what those projects were trying to do. 

But maybe its because they just have their feet firmly in both atmospheric sound design and black metal worship, or maybe its just because the technology has gotten better, the idea of making vast landscape vision inducing black metal is just so crystallised on this release. 

As a final aside, the fact this is a debut release is honestly shocking. I have no idea where this band will go from here because this record seems really hard to improve on.

Conclusion

There’s something deeply grounding about a good nature worship black metal record, it’s like eating an apple the day after eating fucked up junk food.

I don’t have much else to say here other than this record is solid as fuck. Go buy a copy. 

BMZ rating: 8,5 out of 10

Support The Great Sea Here: https://thegreatsea.bandcamp.com/album/noble-art-of-desolation

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