“Change is inevitable, and the disruption it causes often brings both inconvenience and opportunity.” – Robert Scoble
I looked for all sorts of quotes about change when preparing to write this review. From Benjamin Disraeli to Heraclitus, but eventually settled on tech guru Robert Scoble, as the addition of inconvenience and opportunity seemed pretty apt for the 5th album from Germany’s Mental Cruelty.
The inconvenience? The band is no longer deathcore.
The opportunity? There is a whole new fanbase available.
If you heard the band’s 4th album, 2023’s Zwielicht, you already knew this was a very different-sounding band from the band’s debut, Purgaturium, as the band leaned hard into the ‘blackened’ element of blackened deathcore, but songs like “Symphony of a Dying Star” teased something more, something even more black metal-based and epic.
And now on Echoes of a Forlorn Land, the transformation into a full-on symphonic black metal band is complete.
Of course, if you follow the band and have heard the first three singles, “Helheim”, “Raise the Raven Banner”, and “Frost”, you were already clued in to the style shift, and of course the Viking/Nordic themes the album and songs were taking on.
But what you might not be ready for is how fucking good the band is at this new style and how fucking great the rest of the album is. Basically, it’s a whole album of songs like “Symphony of a Dying Star” (minus the breakdowns).
Whereas Zweilicht has about a 50/50 split between black metal and Lorna Shore -ish deathcore, with massive breakdowns and super deep guttural squeals, growls, and snorts, Echoes is a solid 95-99% melodic/symphonic black metal melodic death metal affair. Vocalist Lukas Nikolia has a 100% black metal/ melodic death metal rasp, and the riffs here are riffs you would hear on a Dark Funeral, Necrophobic, modern Hypocrisy, or even Anaal Nathrakh album. Then throw in the Viking gloss (in the riffs and the lyrics), including traditional Viking instruments like the Tagelharpa /Kravik lyre (which the band learned how to play); you can also get some Mithotyn and Thryfing moments to top it off the affair.
After the intro, “Fenrir” comes blasting out of the gates, with searing black metal riffs that would fit on any recent Dark Funeral album, then “Blood For Blood” ups the ante even more with utterly furious riffs that could have come from Anaal Nathrakh’s Eschaton.
The back third of the album might be even better. There’s the biblical/angelic detour of “Cry of Batariel” (one of the original 22 angels cast out of heaven), an absolute scorcher of a track that sees the symphonic elements cranked up to 11. Then there is the stunning end cap, “Flight of the Valkyries”, where, as you’d expect based on the song title, choral arrangements and orchestral arrangements come together over a simply stunning array of riffs, and even a stomping chorus/riff that would make Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth proud. It’s easily as good as “Symphony of a Dying Star”, still one of my favorite songs of the last few years.
I admit initially the first singles didn’t do much for me, until I got the promo and just embraced the album as a whole and fully realized there would be no deathcore here, and took the album for what it is; fucking fantastic. And when countless bands are leaning into the Lorna Shore sound (including Mental Cruelty themselves for 2 albums), I’m impressed by the fact that Mental Cruelty leaned away, and decided to forge a different path for this album. Now I’m just curious if they stick with the sound and Viking motifs for the next one.
