Sunday Sesh: Facing the Polar Vortex
If you live almost anywhere in North America, you’re probably freezing the lol off your buttz (thanks, Space Pants!) right now. Rather than hunkering down like the miserable wretches most of us are, though, I think we should stand in defiance and break the ice with some fiery riffs. In this Sesh, we’re sharing the riffs that bring the heat and make us sweat.
While most of us primarily consider black metal as winter music for its intrinsic ability to chill us down to our very bones, we often overlook the fact that black metal guitarists have imbued the very essence of hellfire directly into their riffs. That cold arctic air may be causing a nasty front to smother our hemisphere to absolute zero, but we can each stay black and crispy if we equip the right form of blasphemy.
For my particular firebrand I’m choosing Aosoth‘s excellent split with Order of Orias. With each band focusing their specific talents into long-form, harrowing tales of brimstone and blasphemy, both conjure the darkest riffs possible and create pure molten streams direct from the river Phlegethon itself. Aosoth initiates the festivities with “Exhibit B,” a belching eruption of cascading, slightly dissonant riffs that wreathe themselves about the trees and hills like a napalm serpent before all hell breaks loose around the four-minute mark. The subsequent conflagration of riffs and blasts torches and pollutes the soil, leaving the land barren for a thousand years.
Order of Orias follow suit with tectonic pressure and push us deeper into our planet’s rotten core. The tinny riffs are a different flavor of insidious than those conjured by Aosoth; though not as visibly destructive, they pump heavy metals into the atmosphere on the back of a galloping rhythm section and with scorching leads with the intent of snuffing out all life through catastrophic climate change. Aosoth burns down out forests, and Order of Orias ensures nothing will ever grow again. When that arctic front meets this wicked split, the torrid storm is going to leave nothing in its wake.
So what are you jamming to keep the cold away? Share with us in the comments below.
