Yet there is also elbow room within those parameters, and on “Blackbraid II” you can hear a delicately strummed acoustic guitar here, a traditional flute there.
Catchy riffs, most notably on the single “The Spirit Returns,” coexist with ambitious tracks like the 13-plus-minute “Moss Covered Bones on the Altar of the Moon,” which waxes and wanes like an epic saga.
Pretty impressive for a one-man band: Sgah’gahsowáh (mononymic aliases are very black metal) composes the material and plays all the instruments except for the drums, which are programmed by his friend Neil Schneider.
Blackbraid expands to a five-piece live.)
“A lot of black metal is just about being depressed or sadness, and a lot of it is based in the solitude and somberness of nature,” he said, adding that growing up in the woods “and also being a moody teenager,” that resonated for him.
Persons:
Neil Schneider, Schneider, Sgah’gahsowáh, “, ”, Metallica
Locations:
United States, Florida