Album Review: Silvern – Stardust Sermons (Vendetta Records)

Silvern, a black metal band from Ukraine, is set to release their debut album, ‘Stardust Sermons’, on September 6th, 2024, via Vendetta Records. A journey that has been significantly challenging, with multiple postponements due to the full-scale aggression from Russia.

The album is a conceptual journey that follows a faceless character and explores how the character’s perception of reality shifts through various encounters and challenges. It highlights the duality of human belief, showing that not everything black is truly black, and not everything white is truly white. The album delves into humanity’s need for belief and the unknown mysteries of life, capturing interactions with people, nature, religion, science, and the cosmos.

Showcasing a raw and primitive style of black metal enhanced by bleak atmosphere, Silvern’s debut album has arrived and with it comes billowing darkness. A flood of melancholic savagery with a mind-altering level of storytelling. Present from the moment the opening track Lorn brings forth suffocating heaviness twisted by an old-school blackened mentality. Silvern have power and this start showcases a lot of it.

Although if a more straight-forward expulsion of rawness is what you’re after, the following pair of Unborn and Coffin Eater will deliver. Many of the nuances of these songs are completely buried under the crushing weight of Silvern’s intensity, but it’s still impossible to not notice the clever instrumental twists they occasionally throw in. Although it is still fun to hear a track like Mechanisms of Past as it is nothing but a throwback of fiery speed and icy ferocity.

It’s not a long album, and while Silvern do pack some tracks out (Absorbed Signs is a hefty one), there’s a palatability to the entire thing. Even as the latter part of the album continues to beat the mind into mush via the likes of Supreme Cosmic Shape and Still Higher Than Saviour’s Star. The final two tracks combine the best (and worst) of Silvern. Being unflinchingly intense, wild, ruthless, and shoring up the structure with exciting instrumental shifts.

However, again, a lot of the nuances are lost in cacophony of raw blackness that is determined to sound ripped from a much earlier decade. On a plus, this doesn’t sound forced. Silvern aren’t pretending to be a coarse and harsh black metal band with story-telling aspects to their music, they are that, and so much more.

Silvern – Stardust Sermons Track Listing:

1. Lorn
2. Unborn
3. Coffin Eater
4. Mechanisms of Past
5. Absorbed Signs
6. Supreme Cosmic Shape
7. Still Higher Than Saviour’s Star

Links

Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram