BLACK METAL 2: ALBUM REVIEW
“Here we are, back on the guitar,” Dean Blunt croons on the track “SEMTEX” from his newest album Black Metal 2. The legendarily secretive UK artist Dean Blunt is back with an official follow-up to his incredible 2014 album Black Metal. On Black Metal 2, Blunt explores the same basic sound palette but leaves more space to foreground the darker tones of his voice.
Dean Blunt’s music has a way of seeping through every moment of your life. His songs speak to early morning train rides, drunken nights, and meditative silence. On the first listen, his songs often feel unfinished, but as you get to know them, songs that once felt like sketches become tapestries. Black Metal 2 sees Blunt further toning down his sound, focusing mostly on the guitar and his vocals. He forgoes any element of surprise to give the listener a glimpse into his headspace.
On Black Metal 2, Blunt almost completely drops his sung vocals in favor of a raspy mutter. Although voices often harmonize around him, Blunt always stays out of the fray. He anchors each track, becoming a somber narrator for the listener. On the track “SKETAMINE,” while Blunt mutters, “in the front, on the back, on the face, on the hip,” Joanne Robertson’s vocals whirl around him and his voice gets swept up in a cacophony of guitars and choral vocals. Even with the noise around him, the tone of his voice keeps you focused on the story he weaves.
Lyrically, Black Metal 2 is drug-infused, dark, and hopeless. The track “Nil By Mouth” begins with the line “LSD, CBT, EDT, Daddy’s broke, what a joke, future’s bleak.” The lyrics never go on to offer hope — they’re stuck in a continuous cycle of a bleak future. No track on the project gives a reprise to this feeling. While there are moments of beauty and even ecstasy on the album, underlying throughout is a deep feeling of hopelessness. The album bluntly forces you to question the reality in which we exist.
Dean Blunt’s career has not been linear, and Black Metal 2 continues this trend. Releasing a sequel seven years after the original feels perfectly natural for Blunt — his voice easily slides back behind the acoustic guitars that dominated the first Black Metal project. In fact, many tracks like “La Raza” and “ZaZa” would sound right at home in the first Black Metal installment. He can instantaneously and expertly adopt a style or sound — that’s the magic of Dean Blunt and the power of his versatility.
Like the first Black Metal project, Black Metal 2 promises to keep you company when you need it. Even at its most hopeless, the album feels personal and beautiful. The closing track “the rot” perfectly encapsulates this feeling as Blunt and Joanne Robertson trade off beautifully sung vocals over swinging drums and guitar chords from heaven. Everything on this project brings you into Blunt’s hopeless and intimate world. With Black Metal 2, Dean Blunt continues to craft and execute wholly unique sounds on an entirely different level than any of his contemporaries.