Self-described purveyor of “misanthropic black metal against the world”, Vrag is the one man project of multi-instrumentalist Roland Neubauer. Many will recognise that name as he also moonlights in black metal outfits Frozen Wreath, and Witcher, yet the total control he exorcises in Vrag focuses his energies into a red-hot laser beam and the result is an awe-inspiring (and terrifying, quite frankly) sound. Rendületlenül is the fourth album under the Vrag moniker and finds him digging deep into the roots of black metal to produce an album which signposts a bold future.
With an ethereal opening, and one that gives no hit of the coming storm, Rendületlenül gets off to a sedate (but no less unsettling) start; it’s akin to walking into a snow storm as notes from the guitar flutter around us like flakes and hypnotise us with their ethereal beauty. It means that when the song kicks in at the forty second mark, it is with some force. Like a tempest raging from speaker to speaker, it appears without warning and is all the more powerful by dint of its sudden arrival. It evidences an artist bringing years of experience to bear and finds sound layered in such a manner that it becomes a monolithic entity that stands in marked contrast to the guitar motifs that bookend the song. It’s a neat juxtaposition that contrasts the loud with the quiet, and makes for an arresting opener and one which will echo throughout the album, and Rendületlenül is full of echoes with motifs and melodies recurring at optimum moments, stitching the album together and making for a cohesive listen.
When an artist assumes total control of a project, it can be difficult to place distance between themselves and their work and weed the good ideas from the bad. Yet this album has a preponderance of the former, which suggests that the artist also known as Vrag has mastered his art. In fact, Rendületlenül is bursting at the seams with the good stuff; whilst melody is often seen as anathema to black metal, it’s employed with great effect here and ensures that ‘Eyredül a világ ellen’ has a sense of movement, and it ululates like a longboat on a stormy sea, whilst the circular riff on Árny vagyok’ descends as if a staircase leading to Dante’s Inferno. The spaces between the songs are longer than average and it’s something of which I thoroughly approve; not only does it give time for the listener to digest what they’ve heard, but it makes the cavernous silence that follows tracks such as ‘Él a múlt’ positively deafening.
Bringing the album full circle ‘Önmegtagadás’ proffers both closure and a new beginning, it turns the page on one chapter and suggest there’s much more to come from Vrag.
- Rendületlenül is released via Filosofem Records and is available now (from here).
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Track List:
- Rendületlenül
- Egyedül a világ ellen
- Árny vagyok
- Él a múlt
- Ahol az érték megsemmisül
- Önmegtagadés
