Krieg lead singer Imperial has led the band from its chaotic black metal origin and sculpted it into a hallmark of USBM. Krieg’s latest, Transient, draws inspiration from a far-reaching number of genres and bands; from crust and d-beat/grind like His Hero Is Gone and Dropdead to the dissonant melancholy of post-punk luminaries like Joy Division and Killing Joke. And all of that is draped with occasional noise tapestries that highlight the dramatic flourishes of their blackened experiment.
Imperial, alongside guitarist Alex Poole, who moonlights in the excellent Esoterica and Chaos Moon, harnesses these far reaching sounds along with a bestial black metal ferocity that reeks of both psychological exploration and urban decay.
These new influences first culminated with their benchmark album, The Black House in 2004. It was the first Krieg album that employed a wider range of sounds, clearer production and made for a more palatable listen - especially for those not so keen on the “necro” lo-fi production of their earliest releases. That quest for new influences and sound has continued. Four years since their last full-length, The Isolationist, Krieg returns with the masterful follow up, Transient. Like its title suggests, the songs that make up Transient are continually on the move, rarely staying within the confines of one genre.
Starting off with some brief and unsettling atmospheric noise, Transient’s hybrid metal assault begins in earnest with ‘Order of the Solitary Road’. The opening riff is backed by a tribal stomp that more than hints at Krieg’s indebtedness to the epic crust of Amebix and Dystopia. This is but a mere few seconds before the jackhammer of Krieg’s bestial black metal erupts from the speakers and builds to a crescendo before plunging into fist pumping black ‘n’ roll. The juxtaposition of tempos in this opening track is both expertly crafted and executed for maximum effect; fast, aggressive, and scornful, but also complicated and full of feeling.
As the album continues, so does the experimentation. One minute they're blasting with the unhinged emotive qualities of grindcore and the next, on tracks like ‘Circling the Drain’ and ‘Ruin our Lives’, they've broken into a minimalist soundscape of fuzzed out electronics and echoed percussion. ‘Ruin our Lives’ explores the correlation between post-punk and depressive black metal while blurring the lines between the genres.
Upon first listen, I noted more than a hint of Amebix’s influence in Krieg’s writing, and it became glaringly obvious I wasn’t far off the mark with their raging cover of ‘Winter’ halfway through the album. From there, Krieg slides seamlessly into ‘Walk with them Unnoticed’, exuding a psych-rock sound, before once again shifting between that and black metal savagery.
The second to last track, ‘Home’ is notable because of its complete departure from black metal and rock aesthetics. It has swirls of electronics and acoustic guitar, à la Death in June, serving as a soundtrack to the spoken word section, reminiscent of the sociocultural commentary of Bukowski or Thompson. The sounds by themselves had me checking my stereo to make sure that the surround speakers hadn’t kicked in. Transient finishes off in a blaze of black metal glory with ‘Gospel Hand’.
Transient is an example of the resulting sublime musical extremes morphing within an album and not adhering to conformist ideals of black metal. They’re throwing out, and perhaps rewriting, the blue print for inspired black metal, with an album that exudes authenticity. Transient is a work of evil, of anti-romance, reveling in the voice of aggressive disgust with an opposition to life that bypasses conventions and speaks from wild unfiltered vision.
