1349 - Revelations of the Black Flame (2009)

I’m pretty sure this album will cause plenty of controversy since 1349 have been releasing brutally amazing Black Metal albums since their conception, and now they hit back with a very ‘weird’ experimentation album.

1394 tries to experiment with Ambient, Black Metal and even some Drone stuff here and there, and they sound…. very different. I gave this album plenty of listens before I wrote this review since my original reaction was to be repulsed by it, but the again, I always think that bands should experiment and do different things instead of releasing the same album over an over.

The best thing I can say about this release is that it creates a great eerie and haunting atmosphere that will creep anybody that listens to this album on a dark night in a forest, however this is nothing new and other bands have excelled at creating the same feeling. The ‘Black Metal’ parts of this release get stale after a few times listening to the same boring riffs over and over, and the bands endurance and brutality is pretty much gone in this whole album, so If you are expecting a BM album please skip this release.

The whole Ambient / Noise experimentation does not work too well for this band, it takes balls to do an album like this, but it also takes good songwriting and interesting ideas, not just rehashing what other bands in the genre have done and calling it your own.

The production of this album is very good indeed (second good thing about it) and you can listen to everything in a crystal clear way, all the little ambiance noises and distorted guitars sound amazing, too bad they are not good.

Overall this album is a ballsy attempt from 1349, showing that they don’t really care about what people want to hear from them and that they will release whatever they like. Hopefully this does not damage their reputation too much, and I’m even more hopeful that they return with another ass kicking Black Metal album in the vein of “Hellfire”. By the way there is also a very ‘weird’ cover of Pink Floyd in this album that at least is ‘original’.

Release: June 2, 2009

Country: Norway