Thulcandra wields every weapon in the Swedish meloblack arsenal. The album’s fierce blackened death riffs sound lifted from the raw The Somberlain. Guitar leads echoing the more polished Storm of the Light’s Bane add to the spectacle, managing to both soar and crush. Acoustic interludes break the pattern, recalling Dissection’s closer “Feathers Fell.” Even Thulcandra’s musical embellishments resemble Dissection, like the harmonic minors and frequent mordents (“Velvet Damnation”), which make Hail the Abyss sound as icy as its forebears. Careful readers might detect a pattern. Hail the Abyss sounds like Thulcandra, and Thulcandra sounds like Dissection, just as they did twelve years ago.
Aping their influences makes it tough for Thulcandra to stand out. Because Hail the Abyss’ style of melodic black metal sounds so familiar, I’m happy to be finished by the end of its 48 minutes. The acoustic parts feel cookie-cutter for the same reason, and they add runtime without contributing unique content. A particularly sedative example is the overdose of clean sections that dominate from the end of “Blood of Slaves” through the beginning of “The Final Closure.” To their credit, Thulcandra does occasionally branch out more, like the simple but deadly death metal riffs on “On the Wings of Cosmic Fire” and “Blood of Slaves.” But this experimentation is sometimes marred by excess. The two longest tracks “Acheronian Cult” and “The Final Closure” both venture out of Thulcandra’s comfort zone, into a combination of menacing black metal and high-powered death metal. But both spend too long meandering between ideas, and lose my interest over time. Thulcandra has it in them to expand their horizons, but they haven’t quite done so in a compelling way on Hail the Abyss.
But still, like its genre ancestors, Hail the Abyss rips. The front half throws down scorcher after scorcher. Other than the unnecessary interlude “At Night,” everything from the first moments of “In the Eye of Heaven” through “Velvet Damnation” is rifftastic, and Thulcandra nails their melodic sound to a T. Most impressively, Thulcandra excels with both lightning-fast riffs and slowed-down choruses, and highlights like the title track switch between these extremes without ever leaving me behind. Even the acoustic sections work when they’re integrated well into the metal. The first half of “Acheronian Cult” stitches together an acoustic intro, blackened melodies, and chuggy death metal, without sounding forced or abrupt. The album falters as it progresses, and even the shorter tracks on the back half don’t live up to the irresistible openers (“As I Walk through the Gateway”). But Hail the Abyss is consistently decent and frequently excellent.
In short, Thulcandra’s Hail the Abyss is a Thulcandra album. It’s a worthwhile slice of melodic black metal for any Dissection lovers, but struggles to be much more. There’s no doubt that Thulcandra is capable of variety, as evidenced by their occasional experimentation and Kummerer’s work in Obscura. If they had written a different album, they might have broken out of their niche and scored higher. But then again, they might have scored lower. If Thulcandra’s aim is to continue churning out reliably fun Dissection worship, I can’t complain.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: thulcandra.bandcamp.com | thetruethulcandra.com | facebook.com/ThulcandraMetal
Releases Worldwide: May 19th, 2023
