Band:	Thy Catafalque
Album:	Alföld
Style:	Avantgarde black metal
Release date:	June 16, 2023
A review by:	musclassia

01. A Csend Hegyei
02. Testen Túl
03. A Földdel Egyenlő
04. Alföld
05. Folyondár
06. Csillagot Görgető
07. A Felkelő Hold Országa
08. Szíriusz
09. Néma Vermek

Being a band typically flagged as avant-garde, Thy Catafalque unsurprisingly have different flavours for their various records. Naiv was generally fun and bubbly, while Vadak had a more melancholic feel to it; in contrast, Alföld stands out due to its aggression.

It’s an intentional approach from project mastermind Tamás Kátai, who introduced the record and its release announcement as “the most straightforward and classic extreme metal album the project ever recorded.” It’s not like Thy Catafalque haven’t gone in this direction before; one of their most acclaimed albums, Meta, also featured its fair share of extremity. It’s also not like it’s bereft of the folksy melody that has characterized their records since 2011’s Rengeteg. However, following an album with the diversity of Vadak, it’s intriguing to see Kátai’s perspective narrow this time around.

When Thy Catafalque go hard, they’ve always had a characteristic sound; the riffing is typically densely heavy in the low end, more resembling death metal, but with a fair share of blackened hints in there as well, plus a firm focus on groove rather than pure brutality. It’s an approach that I feel has worked nicely in segments, including on several songs on Vadak; in contrast, I’m not wholly enamoured with songs that almost exclusively focus on extremity, such as opening track “A Csend Hegyei”. The blackened midsection offers some variation from the gnarly death-style riffing and guttural growls of the rest of the song, as does a brief lead guitar cameo at the end, but with the previous two albums opening so strongly with the likes of “A Bolyongás Ideje” and “Szarvas”, it does give me a muted first impression of Alföld.

“A Csend Hegyei” is probably the heaviest track on the record, but there are a few others more dominated by extremity, including “Testen Túl”, which starts rigidly mid-tempo but becomes increasingly frenetic and blackened as it progresses, as well as “A Felkelő Hold Országa”, which does incorporate more of the signature Thy Catafalque melodic charm alongside its more aggressive riffs. However, I have to admit that I don’t feel like extremity is the greatest strength of Thy Catafalque as a project; I much prefer their songs that either have a balance of light and heavy, or those that prioritize the former more. The first song on the record to strive for a mixture of the two is “A Földdel Egyenlő”, which does open in fairly rampant fashion (not to mention featuring some attention-drawing tech-death fretless basswork around the minute mark), but which drags in an increasing number of Thy Catafalque’s other common features, right up until the two-thirds mark, where everything pulls back and the proggy folk takes a central role.

For me, this is the song with which Alföld starts to come to life; on pretty much every one of the first half-dozen listens I gave it, it was that transition around two-thirds of the way in that was the first moment to really grab my attention. From that point on, there is more variety to be encountered on the album; “Folyondár” is a mellow, convoluted instrumental with flute and violin solos, while “Csillagot Görgető” opens with Viking-style group singing, and persists with clean vocals despite the meloblack guitar foundation of the track.

Additionally, although this record is a full 20 minutes shorter than Vadak, it still finds space for one long song in the form of the 9-minute title track. It’s a song that opens with relative brutality, including a chaotic, chromatic solo worthy of death metal, but it softens as it progresses, first into more melodic metal, and ultimately into pure instrumental folk (aside from the customary vocal cameo by regular guest Martina Veronika Horváth). On the whole, Alföld does have the variety expected of a Thy Catafalque album, albeit with a clear emphasis on heaviness this time around. However, I do still find myself less warm towards this release than the couple of albums that preceded it.

Perhaps it’s just a personal preference thing; I was never particularly keen on Meta either. However, I have enjoyed more extreme metal in moderation in Thy Catafalque releases before, including on Vadak, which completely blew my expectations away when it was released in 2021. In comparison to Vadak, I feel like there’s just something slightly lacking or underwhelming about Alföld as a complete experience; to me, it seems like pretty much everything that Alföld does, Vadak does too (and often better), but the latter has extra strings in its bow as well, and as a result this new release struggles to make as strong an impression, particularly when it kicks off with arguably its least interesting song.

I feel like if Kátai is going to do another album in this vein, a better way to focus more extensively on extremity would be with songs in the vein of closing track “Néma Vermek”; there is a lot of heaviness in the song, from slower grimness through to blackened aggression and deathly beatdowns. At the same time, between the opening synths and the eerie melodies that pop up throughout this track, it doesn’t abandon the other strengths that lie in his impressively wide-ranging writing abilities; I feel like this synthesis is a more compelling way for Kátai to write heavy music than the likes of “A Csend Hegyei” or “Testen Túl”. Alföld has a monochrome artwork; this isn’t a monochrome album musically by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s closer than most of the other Thy Catafalque releases have been, and it ranks lower down my list of favourite albums from the project because of this.