Around the late 2000s, and early 2010s, bands like France’s Alcest and Bay Area’s Deafheaven popularized a fusion of shoegaze, post-rock, and black metal commonly called blackgaze. Deafheaven’s 2013 album Sunbather, with its stark pink cover art and dreamy guitar sound, divided the metal community. Sunbather was such a critical and commercial success, that it led to a new crop of blackgaze artists who followed in its wake.
2013 also saw the release of another pink-colored album, Try Not to Destroy Everything You Love, the third release from Frisian band An Autumn for Crippled Children (AAFCC). Started in 2009 by three anonymous members, singer/guitarist MCHL (sometimes MXM), bassist TD (TXT), and drummer CHR (CXC), the Dutch band had the same dreamy textures as other blackgaze acts, but veered a little closer to traditional black metal’s low-fidelity recording.
AAFCC released several albums under that name until 2023’s Closure, after which they entered a new phase of their career, starting by shortening their name to An Autumn. They were the first group signed with Bölverk Collective, an upstart label and apparel brand out of Milton, Delaware started by a couple of mead makers. In addition to the new name and label, MCHL changed up his singing style, using more of a death metal growl and spoken passages as opposed to black metal shrieking. This makes the lyrics easier to comprehend – lyrics that the band have made available for the first time in their 15-year history. Ethereal, the first album under the name An Autumn, was released on November 9th.
Musically, the album follows more or less the same pattern as their previous work, expansive guitars, pounding rhythm section, and harsh vocals. Synths, while always present, play a pretty big role in Ethereal. Indeed some songs sound more or less like synth-pop in structure more than any kind of traditional metal, even blackgaze.
The album opens with “The Kind of Grief That Never Leaves You,” a song about living with grief’s lasting effects. There is a sharp synth figure that ebbs and flows between the song’s wailing guitars and blast beats.
“Last Night” begins with a quiet keyboard part before the guitars, drums, and vocals come in strong.
“Dreaming” contains some of the most upbeat guitars on the album, but don’t let the intro riff fool you; the song is still heavy! CHR’s frenetic drumming really stands out on this track.
“Like Death” likewise starts with a lighter intro before evolving into heaviness. Lyrically, the song is a rumination on the narrator not being happy with who he is, ending on the repeated line “avoid being me.”
The title track opens like something straight out of the eighties: vibrant synths and a sparkling guitar riff. A piano cuts through occasionally as the song progresses. Another vocally heavy song, but the music is hopeful and uptempo.
“Just Empty” starts with a gothy synth-pop hook, when just after the 1:00 mark, a drum riff takes the song to black metal territory. The bridge features MCHL‘s spoken vocals before a lengthy synth solo leads to the end guitar note.
“The Flow Of the River” is built upon a shoegaze-y guitar part playing behind a metal riff. Vocals start off spoken, before moving to growls and back again.
The album closes with the orchestral “We Never End.” Synth strings feature heavily on this track, and CHR’s drums are some of the best on the album.
Ethereal is a solid album with a lot of different styles of music working well together. It has taken me a bit to warm up to the new vocal style, and I’m not sure it works all the time; the switch between growls, shrieks, and spoken passages makes the vocals seem inconsistent. It’s as if MCHL is trying to find his new voice but hasn’t quite landed on it yet. Overall, though, it’s good, and fans of Search and Destroy (Thursdays at 3:00pm) would probably dig this new release!