Band info
Band: Black Spine
Album: Akeda
Released: February 26th, 2025
Genre: black metal, depressive black metal
Location: Sweden
Review
Hallå and välkommen to a new Friday of gloom and doom to finish off the working week! You might want to know why we are greeting you with half-baked Swedish, and it is because we are incredibly hyped to share this submission today with the world, hailing from Sweden.
Black Spine is not a new name for us and we have seen this project grow and develop since its inception, when we got contacted to feature the earliest material, the EP ‘Through the Collapse of Industrial Society‘, where we already saw an interesting shot in 4 pieces within the frame of the doom-black spectrum of depressive black metal, leaning towards a wave of pessimistic anger against the modern capitalist industrial and exploitative lifestyle invading every corner of the planet. The title was not really cryptic about it, and neither is the project signing itself anti-human and pro-nature. We can share the sentiment against, worded differently, the anthropocentric optics of societies and cultures built on the premise of supremacy and mindless exploitation of a world that owned our submission, but let’s get started on what Black Spine has to tell us sonically after a long year in between this work and the EP.
Having a leap from the decadence and decay of the urban context, ‘Akeda‘ starts off with a cleaner production and with a blasting introduction that quickly turns into a fast tempo sound highlighted by a thread of melancholic and sorrowful riffs making for the pillar of the song alongside keyboard and atmosphere arrangements on top, closing the circle for a solid work. Heavier and delving more into a flowing miasma of negativity and what we could only describe as combative resentment stacking over wrathful sadness, the album goes on giving more space to slower and denser parts where the shrieks breakthrough, weaving the energy of the vocals with melodies of the lead guitar, on a signature blend of notes with no abuse of distortion at all, letting the rhythm be clear and playful, yet extremely grieving.
There’s an echoing remembrance in the whole record but more noticeable from the next song forward, taking the title of the album, to the sound of many names in the DSBM frame, again, but Black Spine would fall in between what names such as ColdWorld and Glädjekällor, hinting from this humble reviewer to names that have helped in one way or another to shape this particular umbrella of sounds to channel the saddest feelings out of our chests, as always, something incredibly necessary to address and manage instead of looking aside while everything within and around us crumble from ruins to dust.