Band:	Corr Mhóna
Album:	Abhainn
Style:	Celtic black metal, Doom metal, Heavy metal
Release date:	April 2021

01. An Fheoir
02. An Tsúir
03. An Bhearú
04. An Laoi
05. Banda
06. Cumar An Dá Uisce
07. An Tsláine
08. Uaimh
09. An Tsionann
10. An Tsuláin

One thing we learned from the last Havukruunu album was how powerful a frigid opening could be: nothing prefaces an album full of dark, doomy, black-and-folk-encrusted heavy metal like a communal exaltation bellowed into the ether.

Corr Mhóna and Havukruunu hail from different musical lineages and acknowledge different modern influences, but they still overlap in their appreciation for layers of stentorian clean vocals and weighty, bounding chord progressions packed with ancient vigor; though the gust of echoing voices that heralds the arrival of Abhainn puts me immediately in mind of Uinuos Syömen Sota (hence the particular invocation), anyone along the lines of Ereb Altor, Darkest Era, or Falkenbach could stand in for illustrative purposes - at least up to a certain point. While these comparisons will convey well enough that Corr Mhóna's folk aspirations fall on the serious, blackened/heavy side, with tremolo-picked riffs, thrash-like momentum, and an eventual debt to Bathory found in most corners, this quartet, comprising two sets of brothers, hails from Ireland, and that usually suggests another unique flavor.

If the folk-adjacent metal bands of Ireland were to approach their vocation in the manner of their Finnish and Scandinavian counterparts, we'd have dozens of bands dressed in shamrock suspenders singing shanties to Banba, trying their best to jam blastbeats into "Carrickfergus" and doing ads for Guinness. Instead, thank Fionn, the biggest names in the Irish folk metal scene - artists like Primordial, Mael Mórdha, and Cruachan - prefer a more oblique route, leaving the St. Patrick's Day parties for Dropkick Murphys and the rest of the folk-punk partiers. What often persists in Irish metal, and in the music of Corr Mhóna, is significant doom influence: a counterweight of dreariness, lumbering rhythms, thick low end, and a general sense of impending mortality. Echoes of traditional songwriting clothe themselves in these doom elements; the eager jaunt necessitated by a lot of traditional Irish music is ill-suited to the mood of misery perpetuated by such bands, which is why, rather than hordes of bastardized fiddle tunes transferred to guitar leads, you'll most often hear reflections of musical heritage in the heft of the drums, the fall of the chord progressions, and, especially in this case, the vocals.

While harsh screams have their place on Abhainn, the more striking technique applied - and the one whose astounding entrance on "An Fheoir" quickly took my interest in Corr Mhóna from a casual curiosity to a full review - is sean-nós, a less popularly explored facet of Irish music. The exact characteristics of sean-nós singing are nebulous, owing to regional differences and the elusiveness of an agreed-upon standard form, and Corr Mhóna's application is largely atypical anyway inasmuch as it is a style of singing meant to be unaccompanied. Even absent a textbook definition and any particular expertise on my part, however, what can be said about the vocals is that they are charismatic, a medley of melismatic shouting that puts as much emphasis on the strength in the air as on the movement of the melody. All of the lyrics on this album are in Irish, making Corr Mhóna even more of a rarity.

Abhainn's tonal balance keeps it moored to an earthy mood as it evolves, tumbling through shifts in time signature, structure, duration, and style over the course of the album. Sometimes that variance does cause the album to shed momentum, and in all its meandering Abhainn loses me from time to time. Aside from the singing style and Irish lyrics, Corr Mhóna are probably not offering anything you haven't heard before, but they're capable of some achingly expressive melodies - particularly on the closer, "An tSuláin" - and when it reaches its peaks, Abhainn does sound like a truly inspired work.