6:30 to Infinity

OK, indeed, black metal is anti-transcendent, yes. (Sin-eater, perhaps, as Niall claims, but once eaten, rarely passed on.) But then there are songs like this (see also nearly everything by Sombres Forets, or, in a very different register, Paysage d'Hiver). Which make evident that the issue is not so much anti-trascendence impossible negativity, not flailing roaring mess, but a deeply unmodern patience. An accretion, a willingness to wait and wait for one moment that doesn't so much justify what preceded it as leave it behind. For all that ceaseless internal speed, all lines in tremolo, over-picked, the velocity of circulation, it mocks the equation of speed and progress. It moves glacially slow, through the piled fuzz and grime, so much so when a single clean riff 6 and a half minutes rings out over the hoofbeat-gallop, it becomes the fitful, soaked-sheet dream of all pop producers, the hook that got away and found itself in the wrong hands.