Band:	Second To Sun
Album:	The Walk
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	November 25, 2018
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. We Are Not Alone
02. Black Lines
03. Home
04. From Outer Space
05. The Train 1702
06. The Owls
07. New World Order
08. To Live
09. We Are Alone

What has bigger, emptier forests than Norway? Russia. What has colder, frostier winters than Norway? Russia. Where did we go for our black metal in 2018? Well, a lot of places. Sweden for Funeral Mist, the US for None, Greece for Varathron, Iceland for, like, 20 bands? but also Russia.

The Walk feels like a tour de force through all of the possibilities afforded by black metal; so many styles are represented, backed up by one of the rawest and most furious deliveries I've heard this year. The instrumentals are so crisp and forceful that you could easily rile up a crowd at a hardcore show and choke-slam a bear into the pit. Second To Sun's first few albums were instrumental, which I assume is why the band seems so capable of sustaining an entire song through instrumentals alone, but I'm glad that vocalist Gleb Sysoev was brought into the fold, because his wicked retching adds a lot of malevolent feeling, as well as straight-up black metal cred. The sustain and vitriol that he coaxes out of his vocal cords counter the band's more melodic tendencies to draw more strength out of both the black metal and the nonblack metal sides of The Walk.

The Walk opens with "We Are Not Alone," a quintessentially creepy black metal lullaby if I've ever heard one. That minor scale riff is a pure black metal construction of the most classic variety, but the way those riffs echo in the background is a kind of evil that Second To Sun didn't steal from anyone else; it's a hypnotic suggestion of folk music, not because of its melody or instrumentation, but because of how ancient and eerie it feels, and how likely you are to see a coven of hooded figures emerging from a frozen, central Russian forest while playing that scale. The momentum of this first track carries through the rest of the album; each successive song, while based in black metal and showing off the frostbitten chops of Second To Sun, aims for something different from what the last track gave. "The Owls" ought to go down as one of the best individual tracks of 2018.

White peals of feedback speak of hardcore influences; soft, chilly synthesizers deliver an atmosphere from the atmosphere; laborious, expansive percussion trudges with the titanic of lethargy of post-metal (it's not "slow," it's just massive). You'll even hear a groovy pinch harmonic now and again to make you wonder who invited Zakk Wylde, and check "New World Order" for a variety of interesting breakdowns. With the high production values, violent performances, and ear for catchy riffs that Second To Sun bring to this album, The Walk could be an outstanding album even if it were just straight black metal - but I'm glad that it isn't, because the variety of flavors and subgenres touched on here make it a much more rewarding and lasting experience.