Metal has long taken inspiration from the realms of horror, mysticism, and the occult. Paths to Deliverance adopt ideas from all three. Debut Ten, structured roughly around the bardo—the liminal experience leading from the point of death through to reincarnation—also borrows imagery and storytelling from “Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Graham Masterton, and Stephen King, as well as […] Dante.” You would be justified in assuming this is a solo project, given its eclectic and lengthy blurb, but this is only partially true as progenitor A.S.A has recruited artists to fill every position other than his own vocal and bass duties.1 It is, of course, black metal—if the concept, the fact that it’s a solo project, and artwork weren’t a clue. Yet here again, Paths to Deliverance claim difference and particular fearfulness. Not trve or raw, but truly frightening, and deeply personal, if the promo material is to be believed.
Ten is a lengthy tale and like any story, has its ups and downs. However, these fluctuations cannot be attributed only to the concept that supposedly drives the music. Surrounding the peaks of ardour and vivacious, vitriolic riffdom is an odd nebulousness that drains the force from otherwise solid songs. This sense, which only builds over the runtime, contributes to the album’s lack of cohesive flow, and how it may yet contain greatness. Running through Ten is a powerful current of feeling, expressed primarily through a mournful, melodic black metal that sounds a lot like Gaerea in everything from the extended mini-catharses of rushing drums and urgent tremolos, to the very guitar tones and the way the howls and riffs echo brightly in the background (“Resonances,” “Alone in the Dark,” “Delirium,” “The Storm”). Right alongside this is a more belligerent blackened death, less concerned with atmosphere than with evoking the spirit of spiteful independence that eschews the vulnerability of that other, more melancholic style (“Solitude,” “The Calm Before the Storm”). And then there’s the vague integration of a raucous group-vocal attitude (“Delirium,” “Here Lies…”) and classical guitar (“Reveries,” “The Storm”). These approaches are not inherently contradictory, and allow Paths to Deliverance to demonstrate worthy aptitude for stirring and exhilarating black(end) metal. As components of Ten, however their integration can lead to a tonally mixed bag.
Paths to Deliverance tease with moments of greatness, but squander their potential through messy execution and incoherent compositional choices. The trend begins instantly, as the mournful drama built so perfectly in opener “Ab Initio,” is hastily discarded in the jump to upbeat “Resonances,” vindicating anyone who’s ever argued the pointlessness of intros; but it’s worse, because “Ab Initio” is over three minutes long. Across Ten, we must witness Paths to Deliverance dampen the power of combined chilling atmospheres and thrilling riffs by burying them in what feels like filler that meanders (“Solitude,” “Alone in the Dark”) or pushing them to the final passage of a song, or indeed the album (“The Storm,” “Redemption”). There is an overabundance of directionless, restless addition—a new riff, a tempo change, a key change (“The Calm Before the Storm”)2, layered clean and growled vocals (“Solitude”), a vaguely pop-punk chorus (“Here Lies…”), horns (“Delirium”), chorals (“Redemption”). And as soon as that beautiful refrain develops, and those awesome drum fills propel the song into a blaze, and it seems like Ten might really be brilliant, the magic disappears as Paths to Deliverance show they’re more interested in shoving a different idea in your face (“Resonances,” “”Delirium”), or pulling the tremolos away in favour of about two minutes of completely disconnected acoustic plucking (“Reveries”).
It thus becomes difficult for Ten to be anything other than an awkwardly scattershot and unfocused listening experience. Each element is well-crafted, and there are passages of powerful and powerfully sinister meloblack strewn across Ten. The issue is that they are strewn, and not carefully placed. Why, for instance is “The Storm,” very possibly the best song, relegated almost to the very end, when the listener has long since lost patience for Paths to Deliverance’s self-indulgent tonal indecision. The drumming is consistently tight and excellently performed, but it can’t make up for what lacks in the songs it provides a skeleton for. Whilst things are manageable in the album’s early stages, the interminability of less interesting sections, and the restlessness with which Paths to Deliverance add and subtract ingredients only gets worse over its span.
Ten falls short of the promises that Paths to Deliverance made of it. Not because it is incompetent, but because it lacks focus. It’s only with hindsight that the red flag of the long and varied list of inspirations becomes obvious. The runtime and these inconsistency issues point to an inability to edit, which the blurb reflects. This doesn’t negate those numerous snippets that could, in isolation, appear on a great black metal album. It only makes them harder to appreciate without separation from the rest.
Rating: Mixed
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 256 kb/s mp3
Label: Malpermesita Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: March 28th, 2025
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