Band:	Plague Organ
Album:	Orphan
Style:	Drone, Avantgarde black metal
Release date:	August 2020

01. Orphan

I came for the artwork. I stayed for the hallucinatory jamz behind it.

And it really is quite the gorgeous artwork, isn't it? Done by none other than Stefan Thanneur (former Chaos Ech?s bassist). It's not entirely without reason that artwork from an ex Chaos Ech?s guy would be adorning Orphan, the debut album from the Dutch Plague Organ. Like their French predecessors, this mysterious duo also employs a peculiar, droney brand of blackened death metal, though in a more minimalist, less expansive fashion. Orphan features a single, almost 40 minute track consisting of a largely uptempo fusion of black and death metal, but it would be unfair to leave its description merely at that. A pervasive sense of spooky, ethereal ambiance permeates throughout, as well as an array of vocal techniques that alternate between all types of chants, shrieks, and growls to keep things varied and interesting.

While quite interesting for the most part, the downside to Orphan has to be the monotony created by the constant blast beats of the drum machine for the first 37 minutes of the album, close to its entirety. This is simply too much after a point, and it makes the music of Plague Organ feel as though it comes to an early peak, perhaps around the 20 minute mark, only to descend into less interesting redundancy from there. The ever shifting vocal delivery as well as the eerie drones and ambiance in the background help at least partially to distract from the perpetual barrage of the drums, but on the whole Orphan could have benefited greatly from more frequent tempo changes and some extended periods without any drumming.

For the most part Orphan is quite the intriguing trip through a quasi psychedelic, blackened death whirlwind, but the trip gets lost to an extent in the cacophonous, overbearing blasts from the drums. It seems as though Plague Orphan have a lot going for them with regard to their ability to create an effective atmosphere, so going forward (and especially so if they're looking to capture any of the magic that made Chaos Ech?s so special) it would probably help a lot for them to ease up on the violence of their music and space things out a bit more in terms of mood, tempo, and the dance between atmosphere and extremity.

Overall, a good debut with a lot more going for it than working against it, even if it still could use some work.