On their beautiful second LP, the Minneapolis duo conjure the grandeur of Scandinavian extreme metal with reverence.
Time is a fickle mistress, and so are metal fans’ sympathies. Bands who end up stuck in era-specific transitional subgenres like melodic death metal, for example (or metalcore, or crossover thrash, or blackgaze) still have their fans and their place in history, but are often left behind as the genre forges ahead without them.
But, even though melodic death metal, its close associate, melodic black metal, and their hellish spawn, melodic blackened death metal, may not be all that cool anymore, it doesn’t mean that fans have stopped loving them. While their popularity and visibility have plummeted since the late ’90s and early ’00s, these subgenres are still going, with their own classics and new devotees. The Minneapolis duo Inexorum are a case in point: Their second LP, Moonlit Navigation, sounds like a guided tour through the best of the ‘90s Necropolis Records catalog. Helmed by Carl Skildum with the new addition of Matthew Kirkwold, the project’s unabashed worship of melodic Scandinavian extreme metal is a joy to hear, and they deliver it with reverence.
Describing Inexorum’s chosen micro-genre demands hair-splitting; to be brief, the sound marries the most melodic forms of black metal and death metal, adding occasional dashes of Viking-metal grandeur. Skildum has referenced his love for this particular era before, and Moonlit Navigation is dotted with sonic references to early Dawn, Sacramentum, and, fittingly, Amorphis, whose Tales From The Thousand Lakes may as well have been written about his own rural Minnesota upbringing. And in a testament to the living nature of the genre, those who came upon this scene a bit later may instead recognize shades of more recent acts like Amon Amarth, Thulcandra, or Insomnium. But Skildum and Kirkwold blend signifiers so seamlessly that their sound becomes its own living, breathing thing.
Both band members also play in death thrashers Antiverse and serve as part of medieval metal visionaries Obsequiae’s live lineup, so their genre agnosticism comes as no surprise. Picking apart songs like the grandiose title track or more downbeat “Chains of Loss” in order to deem this bit more death metal, or this bit more purely black, feels misguided; to properly appreciate an album like Moonlit Navigation, the listener must commit to occupying that messy space in between. The clear delineations that now separate death metal and black metal did not exist in their chosen sound’s heyday, and it’s a credit to Skildum that he allows everything to bleed together.
The cold, windswept atmosphere that hangs over the record is as important as the riffs or Skildrum’s weathered growl; there is a sense of place, grounded in the northern woods and jeweled lakes that surround the duo. The bombastic “Dream and Memory” allows the folk-influenced melodies and soaring grandiosity of Viking metal—its own complex beast—to imprint itself on Inexorum’s sound. On the triumphal, synth-powered “The Breaking Point,” which features guest vocalist Sarah Roddy, Inexorum wreathes its stirring melodies in uptempo thrash beats and blasts of frigidity. The acoustic interlude “Wild Magic” offers a momentary respite before “In Desperate Times” closes the coffin lid with a flourish of blastbeats and razor-sharp black metal riffing.
One of the beauties of Moonlit Navigation—for it is an overwhelmingly beautiful album—is Skildum’s ability to craft something new from older, near-forgotten pieces. When there are so many boundary pushing new bands drawing extreme metal forward—from black metal anarchists Dawn Ray’d and extreme metal shapeshifters Immortal Bird to Inexorum’s genre-smashing labelmates Thou and noise-rock vanguardists Couch Slut—it can be hard to understand why anyone would feel compelled to look backwards. But with their latest, Inexorum has provided a compelling argument for honoring the best of extreme metal’s past, even as we continue to carve out its faster, louder, weirder future.
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