Artist: Thulcandra
Country: Germany
Label: Napalm Records
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2023
Admittedly, I only got hooked on the Thulcandra phenomenon quite recently. In the past, I had heard some individual songs, but then ultimately chose not to delve further into it. Reason? Because it was all very much a case of borrowing. Anyone who has caught a few snatches of Thulcandra can immediately hear the obvious influences from Swedish Melodic Black Metal, with Dissection in particular standing out above average. So, as a matter of fact, the decision to give this German band a miss wasn’t even really foolish. But after being persuaded to give the band a second chance, I have to admit that it’s all pretty appealing after all.
A textbook example of ‘lessons identified, lessons learned’, if you will. It’s perfectly fine to be wrong sometimes. Although… was I actually wrong? My objections at the time still actually stand, even on this latest work, ‘Hail The Abyss’. On this brand-new album, we still hear a fine (balanced) mix between bands like Dissection, Sacramentum and, to a slightly lesser extent, Unanimated. That over-familiar Swedish recipe is copied and applied by these Germans on a detailed level.
The question, of course, is that bad? To ask the question is, in this case, to answer it. Of course it’s not, it would also be somewhat hypocritical since I can also have a great time with a record by Brazil’s Apokalyptic Raids…. But beyond that personal note, there are some more nuances that speak in Thulcandra’s favour, which are the focus of both ‘Hail The Abyss’ and this review.
On ‘Hail The Abyss’, that nuance manifests itself best in a sound that was also tentatively audible on the previous ‘A Dying Wish’ album. Although the Dissection blueprint is still widely heard and felt, Thulcandra is nonetheless steadily working on a musical development that increasingly makes way for Heavy Metal. On songs like ‘As I Walk Through The Gateway’, for instance, it is quite evident that the band has made huge strides in terms of incorporating impressive guitar leads. Of course, Heavy Metal forms an important part of the two classic Dissection records, but Thulcandra carefully leans increasingly in that direction, slowly and almost imperceptibly raising the Heavy Metal content. It is exactly that Heavy Metal-ridden catchiness that takes the band a step further and separates itself from other worshippers of the famed Dissection sound.
But fans of the previous Thulcandra albums need not worry at all, on ‘Hail The Abyss’ there are also plenty of nods to the Swedish heroes of yesteryear, listen, for instance, to the excellent ‘Velvet Damnation’ or acoustic interludes like ‘In Darkness We Descend’. The latter introduces the album’s grand finale, as the appropriately titled ‘The Final Closure’ rounds off the album in grand and epic style.
With a portfolio of now five full-length albums, the band can proudly look back on a musical career that, although it started out as a rather shameless copy of Dissection, has since grown into an entity in which the spirit of Dissection is still alive and kicking but has by now put enough of its own spin on it to rightfully speak of a successful band standing on its own feet.
