Band:	The Firstborn
Album:	The Noble Search
Style:	Progressive black metal, Death metal
Release date:	December 06, 2008
A review by:	Thryce

01. Illumination Of The Five Realms
02. Water Transformation
03. Flesh To The Crows [feat. Proscriptor McGovern & Hugo Santos]
04. 'Sunyata (The Wisdom Of Emptiness)
05. The Noble Search
06. In Praise Of Reality
07. Bliss
08. Ocean Of The One Vehicle

The year 2009 is progressing quite steadily and a big share of new releases has been floating by so far. This also means that, by now, we all had the time to pin down the more memorable releases of 2008. Among those more interesting albums of last year belongs The Noble Search by Portuguese metal act The Firstborn. Frankly, The Noble Search was also one of the more challenging releases of the past year. Mainly because it's an a-typical, pretty avant-garde (as in unconventional) album due to complex and experimental (dare I say exotic) tendencies. Before going into detail, let me "warn" you that, it took me an awful long time to bring this particular review to fruition. On the one hand, I had of course a lot of other dirty writing business to deal with, creating a certain review-laziness on my part. But on the other hand - and more importantly - this was such a surpassingly complex yet luminous listening experience that I finally came to realize it was almost impossible to be fully satisfied whatsoever with the way I was putting this album into words... So here goes.

The Firstborn's sound is leaning towards the more extreme side of the metal spectrum, retaining its roots in black metal. The biggest challenge, however, was putting an accurate label on the peculiarity of that black metal founded sound. It so happens that the music is experimental and fluent but also complex in a well-structured way. The mentioned complexity includes tempo swifts, very prominent drumming and clean and harsh vocal alternations. The whole thing is seasoned with plenty of nuances and note-perfect arrangements, giving the album even more elaboration. Moreover, what makes this release so "different" and "special" is that The Noble Search is completely inspired and based on the Buddhist philosophy. Indeed, Buddhism is serving as a solid foundation for both lyrics and sound, giving the album a certain ethnic oriental touch. No reason to panic so far: having a limited/non-existing knowledge about the Buddhist beliefs is not an issue. Basically, the booklet can be considered a colorful crash-course in Buddhism. All the more, the booklet is a sort of tool, helping the listener on its way to their own noble search... or at least providing some necessary background information in understanding the lyrics. Next to the conceptual themes, also the sound is spiced up with some oriental approaches. A sporadic use of sitar and percussion are coloring up the grim black metal layered sound. Due to not being overly familiar with the sitar or the Buddhist theme myself, the first few listens were quite unique indeed. In that event, it nevertheless took me a while to acclimatize to those oriental spheres. Indeed, just like Buddhism itself, The Noble Search is something you'll need to master first before being able to fully comprehend and appreciate.

Maybe "extravagant" is a too expensive word to describe this one-of-a-kind album in the best possible way. But then again, I never quite experienced (and enjoyed) an aberrant metal journey of that kind. Indeed, in all probability The Noble Search will seem like nothing you have ever heard before but will sound surprisingly familiar at the same time - paradox or reality, that's up to you to find out.


PS: the entire album is streaming on the band's [url= http://www.myspace.com/unclenchedfists]MySpace[/url]. Be sure to give it a try.