Band:	Saidan
Album:	Visual Kill: The Blossoming Of Psychotic Depravity
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	May 2024

01. Genocidal BloodFiend
02. Desecration Of A Lustful Illusion
03. Sick Abducted Purity
04. Switchblade Paradise
05. Seraphic Lullaby
06. Veins Of The Wicked
07. Tears Seeping Through Beautiful Agony
08. Visual Kill
09. Suffer

How melodic can raw black metal be before it's no longer "raw"?

I admit I don't keep up will all that's going on in the raw black metal sphere, so a lot of what reaches me might be stuff that somehow got a lot of attention and that gatekeepers would find too accessible. I'm sure Lamp Of Murmuur and Këkht Aräkh aren't as underground as we like to think they are, at least not compared to the "tape limited to 10 copies" perpetrators. So take my word with a grain of salt, but I did notice a certain tendency lately within this wave that is relatively recent. My usual idea of raw black metal is something oppressive and noisy, where the evolutions in sound lead to something even more so, like Pa Vesh En, but instead these aforementioned bands went into injecting their sound with a lot more melody, either in a more straight-forward melodic black metal way, or by injecting something from outside genres.

This isn't my first time covering Saidan, as seen here, and I've made the case before that there is something about black metal working with melodies this bright that somehow works way better than expected. The existence of this hyper-melodic black metal and whatever it tells us about the shared DNA, especially after that covers album has been quite a fascinating development. Unlike Onryō II: Her Spirit Eternal, Visual Kill: The Blossoming Of Psychotic Depravity does not have a "II" in its name, therefore does not call for any comparisons with a previous release. However, I do have to compare it to its predecessor, not only because it's the only other Saidan album I reviewed, but also because in the review I did complain that said album cut down on the J-Rock sounds of the band's debut, Jigoku: Spiraling Chasms Of The Blackest Hell. Well, they have returned.

And the reason why I asked the question in the teaser is because, while the production still favors not sounding complete pristine, it does feel a bit clearer comparatively. Even if the moments that are more straight-forwardly black metal feel worthy of the "raw black metal" tag, the hypermelodic part feels like it tips the scales towards being more melodic than black metal. The melodic part is also not always the most conventionally "melodic black metal". Some of it is more J-rock inspired, with some solos that feel straight out of an X Japan song, but a lot of it also feels closer to something Children Of Bodom would do, punky more in the way that the punk that's a common DNA between metalcore and melodic death metal now also shares it with melodic black metal. That punk component is also much more pronounced this time around, giving the album an even more unhinged energy.

I have to give it to the biggest weebs in Tennessee, Visual Kill: The Blossoming Of Psychotic Depravity does feel like it pushes the borders of melody in black metal, while also making me feel weirdly nostalgic for how that same kind of melodicism was used in metal in the early 00s.