Band:	Anomalie
Album:	Riverchild
Style:	Black metal, Post-metal
Release date:	November 01, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Mother Of Stars
02. An Unforgiving Tide
03. Perpetual Twilight
04. Heart To Beat
05. Awakening
06. Riverchild
07. Among Shadows
08. A Cosmic Truth
09. Thoughts

The waters of this river are less turbid than expected.

A lot of my reviews are of bands which I've already reviewed before. What makes it difficult to return to such a band is feeling that you'd basically just be repeating the first review. Re-reading my review of the band's previous album, Tranceformation, did especially feel like such a case at first. A lot of things on Riverchild are continuations of what was on Tranceformation. It's still an album by a one-man band with the same session drummer. It's still a post-black metal album with a diminished blackgaze presence and where the black metal feels secondary to the post-metal, something evident in the vocals, both clean and harsh. I could pretty much just leave it there.

But, you see, Riverchild feels like a more personal album for Anomalie's mainman, Marrok, who was born and raised along the rural shores of the Danube river, and that's a river that also shares some personal history with me, having spend considerable time on its shores in at least five cities. The more personal nature of the record is reflected in the fact that this album has no credited guests, the most visible difference from Tranceformation, leaving the core duo to reign free by themselves. It is a bit weird seeing that there are moments with some really great use of vocal layering, knowing that all of the layers are, unless the album credits are inaccurate, all Marrok's.

But the sound is also more indicative of the record's reflective nature. The diminished black metal presence to give way to more atmospheric and melodic sounds now feels less transcendental and more introspective. At its core it's still post-black metal that's mostly focused on post-metal, but it also feels surprisingly light but without ever feeling bright. A sound like this can have the pitfall of feeling toothless, and it's how well Marrok pushes the emotional aspect of the sound without Riverchild feeling cheesy that helps it avoid that pitfall. For a record that is still technically a black metal one, having blast beats be so sparsely used does make the moments where they do happen feel that much more impactful.

An airy production, a less harsh sound, a more focused emotional impact, all working against my surface level impression that Riverchild is a mere continuation of Tranceformation.