An anonymous one person black metal band (haven’t seen one of these before) from Louisiana, Vide self-describes their style as “Raw Post Black Metal”. Normally I am not a fan of this particular flavor of black metal, but it’s never been too aurally offensive to my tastes. Is Vide the ideal swamp-dweller, or is this one to let sink back into the bog?
Their 14th release and third full length since 2018, Vide is nothing if not prolific. And credit where credit is due, as Vide tries to write what on paper would be an interesting mix up to the typical tremfests that make up albums of this style, such as what one would see on a release by Black Cilice, another enigmatic raw black metal band whose most recent release I found somewhat enjoyable. Unfortunately, I did not find this album anywhere close to enjoyable. The Parish starts off fine, but steadily gets worse as the album progresses, becoming particularly heinous at the songs “Shelter in place” with its samples thrown into the music, and “Her desperate cries”, which has an almost waltz like guitar line with vocals that almost push this into noise territory, and not in a pleasant way. Another issue is the recurring intro/outro problem present on many albums: these tracks don’t really add anything to the album and are best if either cut entirely or if they bleed into the next song (intro)/bleed from the previous song (outro). It’s not all horrible, however. “Living off borrowed time” and “Kingdom on fire” do their best to save this otherwise sinking airboat from the denizens of the swamp it crawled out of, as both songs abstain from using traditional black metal elements such as blast beats and trem picking to instead have (what resembles) riffs and varying drum patterns. Ultimately, I cannot recommend this album to any but the most diehard of raw black metal fans. There’s not enough of any one element in here that would make me choose something like Vide or any of the countless other bands of this style when I could instead listen to something like Black Cilice and have somewhat of a more enjoyable time doing so.
