Band:	Perihelion
Album:	Agg
Style:	Avantgarde black metal, Post-metal
Release date:	December 06, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Tavasszal A Vadak
02. Rejtek
03. Erdő
04. Parázs
05. Bérc
06. Nyugvó
07. Agg

With each Perihelion release, I hope it would be the one to springboard them into more underground fame. I guess I should at least do my part.

I have been listening to Perihelion for a few years, more precisely since their 2015 album Zeng was released, partly because of Costin Chioreanu's cover art, and also because a few of my online Hungarian have been posting it. I have to admit that I am not as familiar with Hungary's metal scene as I am with my own, as I find a lot of the death or thrash bands to be quite redundant, which is something I can say about my scene as well. As just as we have Negură Bunget, they have Thy Catafalque, and just as we have Argus Megere, they have Perihelion. Our situation is a bit more tricky with a lot of lineup implosions and so on, but you'll find that Perihelion have been around in some form or another (Neokhrome) since 2001, and that frontman Gyula Vasvári has been steadily guesting on Thy Catafalque records since 2016.

As with the previous Perihelion releases, this is another 30-something minutes long album of softly prog post-black metal that they seem to come out with every two years since they changed their name. And actually cut that, it's closer to blackened post-metal than post-black. Actually cut that, there's barely any black metal influence, and the post-metal touches on post-rock more often than not. The cutting room floor work seems to have had a lot of effect on Agg, as the short runtime of both the songs and the album keep it from ever getting bloated or directionless, leaving the sea of reverb-heavy atmospheres of the album to work to their fullest to achieve almost a hypnotic vibe that completely covers the album even at its most vicious. The album rarely lets the black metal out, which is quite deceiving considering that the opening track is the one with the most black metal within it.

The lyrics being in Hungarian there is obviously not a lot (hint: none) that is understandable outside of native Hungarian speakers, but at their most emotive in the post-rock sections, they still manage to transmit a lot of their intended emotion. Though we first meet his shrieks, Gyula Vasvári's wailing vocals shine throughout the rest of the album, sometimes slightly feeling like an acquired taste, but it's quite clear why he was chosen to collaborate on so many of Thy Catafalque's records. The dark vibe of the record along with the slight prog tendencies make this sound somewhat similar to mid-era Anathema most of the times, and a mix of Thy Catafalque and Sólstafir at others, with its language barrier and forward thinking approach to post-black metal. While the voice is the one that captures the most attention, it is the tender guitar play that drives the songs forward, with the bass and keys there to make the atmosphere feel that much more lush.

It's likely that Agg won't make the underground crazy for Perihelion either, but if a few more people decide to check out a pensive Hungarian wailing over ethereal guitars, then it's all for the better.