Short Reviews [Amiensus - 2024 - "Reclamation. Part 1"]

This is my first acquaintance with Minnesota-based act Amiensus, and to be honest I would have probably passed them by apart from the fact that they were described as "progressive black metal", which immediately attracted my attention. I know the genres and sub genres are splintering faster than I can keep up with, but what on earth what did that mean? I then realised this was actually the first of two albums with related artwork and the same title being released in the same year, which certainly seemed proggy to me. Formed in 2010, the current line-up crystallised in 2017 and has been the same ever since with Alec Rozsa (guitars, keyboards, vocals), James Benson (guitars, vocals), D. Todd Farnham (bass), Chris Piette (drums), and Kelsey Roe (guitars, vocals). So we have three guitarists, one of whom also provides bass, and three singers, so it already is a little out there for a BM act. They have already released three albums prior to this, but I don't know if they have come to prog from a traditional atmospheric black metal approach, or if the other albums also sound like this, but this is the first time I have come across black metal quite like this. I have seen them likened to Negura Bunget, but that is more in approach of challenging the norms than it is in style, as here we have a band who can be full on BM with the expected gruff vocals at one point, or mixing into a more of a power metal approach with lush harmonies, or bringing in keyboards here, mixing time signatures with a rhythm section who rarely settle into a traditional black metal mode but who can deliver that when the need arises. The result is an album which is all over the place when it comes to musical style, yet at the same time when it is being played it all makes perfect sense, just that no-one knows where the journey is going to lead as what we have here is not a band playing songs which are different to each other in terms of style but rather they are mixing and blending within. The risk, which is quite real, is that people into black metal will not enjoy what they are doing to the genre, while progheads, even those into prog metal, will find there is too much of here of a style they do not enjoy or understand. Then you have the weirdos like me who enjoy being challenged and feel this has great commercial elements to lighten the black metallic atmosphere, which ensures we get plenty of light and shade and enjoy hearing music being deployed in new ways.