What could be better than beginning 2025 with black metal? I’ll tell you what could be better. Beginning 2025 with one-man-band black metal indulging in a level of excess that only an Italian taking 76 minutes over 14 tracks could. Seven prior full-length Hesperia releases have somehow flown under the Angry Metal Radar, so now I pay penance for our sin of ignorance. Fra li Monti Sibillini (Among the Sibillini Mountains) is a record centered around the nature and lore of a mountain range in central Italy. With such an overabundance of material on this record and across a discography that’s been largely ignored, this release should be terrible. But is it?
Hesperia brandish a type of black metal that’s fast, heavy, and vibrates with energy. The sharp, sawing riffs recall Immortal while their melodic knack recalls Moonsorrow. But the production has remarkable clarity and eschews the lo-fi aesthetic generally favored in black metal, enabling listeners to pick out all instruments in the mix. Because the guitars are distinct, their riffs and melodies are also distinct and represent some of the stand-out parts of Monti Sibillini. There are a load of highlights. The opening lead on “Il Regno de la Sibilla” has a beefy groove, while the closing lead on “La Fuga/La Salvezza” sounds like an icy howl. Likewise, the first riff on “Mons Daemoniacus: Nero Paese de la Scomunica” cuts like a curiously smart scythe and the passage from 2:15 on “l’Eretico, Il Necromante” swings heavily through a real headbanger. By contrast, the harsh vocals are the muddiest sound in the mix. This balances the clear guitars with something gravelly and wretched. It all fuses into some legitimately powerful black metal.
However, this is but one element of the Monti Sibillini sound and is arguably not the most important. Ambience, acoustic passages, and medieval interludes occupy more than half of the record’s run-time. The last of these blends pastoral soundscapes (animals, villagers, festivals) with folkloric instrumentation (strings, whistles, bells) to flesh out the story and themes. These ‘light’ strands aren’t particularly integrated with the ‘heavy’ strands. Transitions from black metal to folk, or vice versa, aren’t sophisticated and generally occur simply by stopping one and starting the other. Given the evident importance of the soundscapes and atmosphere generation to Hesperia, bridging the contrasting sounds more smoothly is an obvious point for future development. Monti Sibillini isn’t folk metal; it’s folk and metal. I further query the purpose of the four medieval interlude tracks when medieval interludes are built into the main songs anyway. They’re evocative but extraneous, adding ten minutes to an album that’s already over-long.
But the greater weakness on Monti Sibillini is how Hesperia are seemingly incapable of sticking to one idea. “l’Qrrivo a l’Hostaria” forms an early microcosm for the whole album. It doesn’t give you an opportunity to get your teeth into any of the incisive black metal or the moody synths or the medieval curiosities as the songs flips between each multiple times within its five-minute duration. The black metal teases something dark and aggressive but can’t build momentum because it constantly interrupts itself with intriguing but incessant atmospherics and soundscapes. “Il Regno de la Sibilla” is the first of a few long songs and despite its strong constituent elements, I can’t describe it as strong overall because it chops and changes so frequently. This is undoubtedly exacerbated by the blunt transitions documented above. Monti Sibillini makes for a frustrating experience as its music doesn’t feel as subtle or dynamic as it should be.
I sincerely struggled with scoring this review. There’s great quality in Monti Sibillini but it’s buried by annoyingly choppy songwriting. The constituent elements are persistently very good but it’s so fragmented that any enjoyment I glean is fundamentally undermined. It ultimately leaves me asking a question: why couldn’t have Hesperia trusted the listener to not become bored after more than 90 seconds of one sound? Why couldn’t the composite parts be fused together more neatly? Why couldn’t we have more of the black metal? If the band can create an album that doesn’t force me to ask these questions then we could have something great.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Website: hesperia.bandcamp.com (managed by Hammerheart Records)
Releases worldwide: January 17th, 2024
The post Hesperia – Fra li Monti Sibillini Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.
