You don’t see “Black Metal Opera” very often but when you think about it, it’s not that far out. Black metal can be bombastic and symphonic. You only have to think of Carach Angren, Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth. The Projectionist was a new name to me. The band is from Canada, a hotbed of icy black metal, and this is their fifth album release in as many years. I note that this is described as an “immersive, chilling horror experience complete with sound effects”.

A rasping spine-chilling opener with a myriad of voices sets the scene. This is followed by the more traditional “Sepulchral Oak Door”. Violent old style black metal surges through a dirty blizzard. The dialogue at the end is surreal. A lady, who I presume to be Amalthia, welcomes her new nurse Evelyne in sinister tones: “You must be exhausted. Come on in. You can make us tea”. You know it’s not going to work out well. The screams and dark swathes of “Covetous” suggest that I might be right. That guitar is dirty. There’s a bit of Enthroned in the style. The vocalist cuts through the cold. Amalthia is getting nasty. Satanic forces are being unleashed. The music is ferocious and stormy. The world becomes distorted, as Amalthia’s wavery voice runs across the nightmarish funeral cacophony of “Summoning Transference”. Deep voices come in from everywhere like monsters rising from a swamp. The instrumental wall and rasping vocalist are in harmonious evil. What’s going on in this storm? It’s not good, that’s for sure. The start of “The Weakening” is like some fuzz fused psychedelic piece. The distorted vocals ominously utter the words to the story – inaudibly, as the instrumentals become weightier and more doomy.

The story is getting desperate by “A Startling Housecall”. The withering riff line is marched by the sharp crow-like rasps from the vocalist. Chaos erupts as a manic piano line incongruously accompanies the narrative. getting despair. The atmosphere was getting lost with the gimmickry. But what wasn’t getting lost was the sense of darkness and despair. “Exuberance Contorts an Evil” exudes heaviness and blackness. The clipped tones of the evil Amalthia enter proceedings and we’re back to the dirty warfare that the drummer and guitarists are peddling. “Flayed” is distinctly Marduk in its style, but here are the superimposed raspings of the vocalist and increasingly insane lady whose story seems too obscure to be told. The screams suggest a plague of bats has been let loose. It’s exaggerated and theatrical and frantic. To be fair The Projectionist promised nothing else. It seems that finally the hapless nurse is broken down, judging by the cries and narrative of “Perfumes”. Meanwhile the band plays on relentlessly. The furious storm extends to the final track “Forsaken O’Clock”. I realised finally that the swampy narrative sounds like some alien from Dr Who, but beyond that the intensity and structure the same so there’s nothing remarkable about it. As a little bonus, there’s an Operation Winter Storm cover. I actually preferred this, as it was just a case of rousing dirty black metal without the confliction or complication.

I found this a bit of a hotch-potch. The music gets buried in the story or vice-versa, and the sound effects in the vocals are exaggerated to the point of being heavily over the top. I’m hearing Carach Angren in all this, particularly in the theatricality, but interesting as it is, “The Stench of Amalthia” doesn’t hang together as the story of the opera seems to be fighting the musical output.

(7/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/theprojectionist666

https://thetrueprojectionist.bandcamp.com/album/the-stench-of-amalthia