The Negative Plane camp has been producing some of the most interesting music to seep out of the American black metal underground in recent years; along with the fantastic albums of surreal, atmospheric black metal that the New York band has released, the members have also pursued other, similarly esoteric sounds with a number of other projects: Nameless Void's other band Occultation has delivered some fantastic, icy, crypt-creeping death rock influenced black psychedelia, and Bestial Devotion has released a couple of records with the dank, atmospheric black metal project Funereal Presence. This one man band had previously released a self-titled EP in 2011 that introduced a strange and phantasmic brand of black metal that shared in much of the same morbid, reverb-drenched ambience as Bestial Devotion's main band, while hinting at a stronger influence of old post-punk in the catchy, eerie hooks and somber melodies that could be heard on songs like "The Sepulchral Cold". On Funereal Presence's first full-length LP The Archer Takes Aim, that sound is explored more deeply, delivering four long tracks of truly haunting music that makes this one of the year's best black metal releases so far.

Archer's cavernous, echoing recording sounds as if this was captured in the bowels of an ancient cathedral, an atmosphere that certainly reminds me of the sepulchral sound of Negative Plane, but the songs themselves on this new LP have a distinctly different feel, blending raw, frantic old-school black metal with slower, loping mid-tempo parts that seem lifted straight out of some obscure 80's death rock album, simple eerie guitar melodies and droning powerchord riffs drenched in reverb, the sound of tolling bells woven directly into the fabric of songs like opener "The Tower Falls". It's intensely atmospheric in a manner different from Devotion's other band, the guitar solos emitting blues-flecked rock leads that scream out of the dank gloom, the vocals a savage distant shriek, everything bathed in a cold blue glow. Hints of classic punky black thrash peer through some of the album's more raucous moments, but even then it'll subvert your expectations as the vocals suddenly appear as a killer clear sung style, a dramatic post-punk croon soaring through the gloom. The reverberant clear guitars that appear throughout Archer also contribute to the post-punk vibe, and there's also some of that strange twangy, almost surf-rock influenced guitar playing that fans of Negative Plane will instantly recognize. The gothic tones of a church organ open the title track, then surge into an even faster-paced assault of subterranean blackened aggression, eerie moaning vocals rising in the background, the song dropping into another one of these signature ripping mid-tempo circle-pit inducing riffs. Shimmering tremolo chords like something off of a Ventures single ripple outward from the searing black metal on the instrumental "Demmerlicht", huge brooding hooks continually emerging from this sprawling blackthrash. And the last song "Gestalt Des Endes" extends out for more than sixteen minutes, slipping from galloping old-school black thrash attack to that shimmery twangy atmospheric guitar to passages of dramatic soaring singing and brooding melody that almost sounds like something from Dawnrazor-era Fields Of The Nephilim, the guitars spiraling out into even more complex, contorted melodies for this final blast of brooding blackness...fucking fantastic stuff. There are moments on Archer that are even reminiscent of classic Mortuary Drape if that band had been more obsessed with classic 80's era British post punk, but make no mistake, this is at it's core a ferocious black metal album. A highly unique sound, and a new favorite here, for sure.