At this moment, there is no other band in black metal that is hotter or hungrier than Portugal’s Gaerea. Gaerea burst onto the scene in 2018 with their debut album Unsettling Whispers. It was heavy not only musically but also emotionally. This band knows how to instill sorrow and hopelessness into their sound. Their last album Mirage started to inject some feelings of hope and peace at stages. They return after two years of intense touring with another offering that sees them step out more into the light. Will their new approach bring them new fans while also maintaining the old ones?
I know that last sentence may give some fans pause before listening to the new album. I am here to assure you that they didn’t go fully acoustic with clean singing the whole time. Gaerea still maintains their sonically crushing brand of black metal full of razor-sharp tremolo riffs, blast beats and deep, crushing bass lines. That is apparently clear on the first two tracks “The Poet’s Ballet” and “Hope Shatters”. While the first track takes it time to build and bring the listener in, the second comes out swinging with Gaerea’s signature sound. The brief pause from the onslaught in the middle of “Hope Shatters” gives the listener a moment to catch their breath before the pain kicks back in. The back end of the track has some fun guitar melodies that pleases my ears.
So now to the big surprise. What is this ambitiousness you have been talking about so far? Well, my friends, I point to track number six, Wilted Flower. This is a black metal ballad and I love it. The track starts with a single guitar strumming every few seconds for the first minute and then the rest of the band kicks in at what would be a snail’s crawl tempo for them compared to rest of their catalog. The track meanders and slithers along with melodic tremolos being lifted by some superb drumming and those deranged vocals full of pain and sorrow. About halfway through, everything stops but the vocals whispering in very clear vocals. A guitar joins over light drumming as the vocals shift back to more of a growl that is pushed back in the mix for more emotional effects. The track picks back up for a moment before going back to the whispering vocals and single guitar. An absolutely breathtaking track. This track was perfectly placed in the album to give the listener a big palate cleanser. This would also be an epic way to end their live set.
Another change I noticed was the number of tracks on the album. This album has 10 tracks, and the run time is around fifty minutes long. The number of tracks is the most on a Gaerea album to date and only two tracks exceed six minutes in run time. When you go back to look at their last two albums, only one track was under five minutes in length. Perhaps the band is trying to add more shorter songs to keep potential new fans entertained instead of potentially scaring them away with the more long, winding and meandering tracks we got on Limbo and Mirage. Sometimes it is better to sprint then run a marathon. Some examples of these tracks would be “World Ablaze” and “Reborn”. They get in, slap the listener around and leave them dazed, just to leave as abruptly as they began.
Gaerea experimented a bit more with their sound on this album and I really think that this could help them gain even more popularity globally. They maintained their core sound throughout Coma but threw in some curveballs here and there to keep the listeners engaged and on their toes. I think the condensing down of the track run time was a great idea, so new fans don’t get overwhelmed by seven plus minute tracks and potentially scare them away. All in all, this is another fantastic addition to the Gaerea catalog that will hopefully be a springboard for them both in their popularity but also in a way for them to continue to experiment with their sound to stay fresh and not be repetitive in the musical output.
