This album has such a great sound and imposes such an overwhelming sense of bleak malice, that even the tracks I’m not in love with work well as part of the whole. Ovfrost’s baleful shrieks lead the charge at the forefront of crystal-clear, sharp guitars that remind of recent Arctos. Fortunately, the album boasts an outstanding production job as well, significantly cleaner than previous releases. This far into my review, I feel that it’s missing something, because Karst Relict is perhaps more easily defined by the feeling of the music over its physical components.
So I still finish each spin of the album feeling satisfaction and woe (but in a good way). I could comment, for example, that “Descent Into Ruin” feels oddly placed so near the end of the album, but it’s also a beautiful interlude, with gorgeous acoustic elements and a level of bleak melancholy that I love in my metal. Still, it’s tough to be too hard on them, because, again – multifaceted approach with consistently good results. Occasionally, Malist does take the atmosphere a bit far – “A Way Through Limbo” lacks the peaks and valleys that make the rest of the album so interesting. “Cthonic Trinity” opens with a slower, more doom-laden approach to atmoblack, towering over the listener and smothering them before exploding into an energetic, upbeat array of seriously fine black metal. The aforementioned “Satellite,” my personal highlight of the album, thunders to life on a foundation of tragic, wailing tremolos before slowing down and amping up the atmosphere for the chorus. Karst Relict stands solidly upon a foundation of inventive riffs, leads, arpeggios, and more riffs.
#Malist pumps how to
Fortunately, Malist knows how to write good black metal. Of course, atmosphere is an important part of atmospheric black metal, but you know what else is important? That’s right, black metal, point for you. Say what you will about atmospheric tropes, but this is not a boring album by any stretch. It’s actually remarkable how much variance Malist manages to fit on one forty-six minute record. Sometimes this means intensity (“Satellite”), sometimes woe (“Lifeless Ease of Nonbeing”), occasionally energetic (“Timeless Torch”), but always bleak, always blanketed with sorrow, and never sticking around in one place too long. Every song on Karst Relict showcases a different side of Malist. If you’re concerned that I’m lobbing another hazy, ill-defined, non-heavy “atmospheric ‘black metal’” record at you, well, you can think again. Probably the most important thing to tell you about Karst Relict straightaway is that it’s very much a multifaceted album. So when I encountered Karst Relict, the third full-length in as many years from Malist, the solo project of one Ovfrost ( Bewailer), I was cautiously optimistic – they haven’t let this site down yet, and the album sounded, on paper, like exactly what I was looking for. Whether because of too much atmosphere, not enough variety, or just an altogether lack of menace or edge, atmospheric black metal of this particular vein was not all that good to me in 2020. Good enough albums, but neither really grabbed me the way I’ve been hoping for. Thinking back, my two most recent forays into its claws have been the most recent offerings by Old Growth and Winterfylleth. I’ve been craving new atmospheric music lately. Like distant thunder, the world of atmospheric black metal is simultaneously a comfort and a terror.
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