Hey look, it’s Botanist, the band with the hammered dulcimer! A consequence of a world filled brimful of good metal bands is that bands become known by their unique thing. Another consequence is a tendency to check out the band for the novelty and move on. See the gimmick, go see the next one. A result of this is that Paleobotany is the first Botanist album I’ve listened to all of. This is what I can only describe as my considerable bad.
Paleobotany is a concept album dedicated to the marvels of the gigantic plants that existed before the Chicxulub asteroid so rudely interrupted their existence. I can’t say I got that feeling of getting lost meditating on another landscape as I might with another band (say Agalloch at their best), but there are shared elements between Botanist and their subject matter. There is a sense of tiny frail details and towering majesty all the same time. Bright flowers blossoming on something dark and old. Botanist‘s sound is primarily post-black metal, all shimmery soundscapes and slow builds. It’s heavy on the atmosphere but usually stays up-tempo enough to avoid drifting mindlessly. Paleobotany‘s brightest moments come when Botanist are at their most frenetic, such as “Wollemia Nobilis” or “When Forests Turned To Coal”, which is particularly effective with the added poignancy of new vocalist Mar‘s cleans. By turn, the mid-album slowdown is when Paleobotany threatens to lose my attention.
Botanist pick a suitably stirring ending in “Royal Protea”. It showcases their best work and evokes that emotion of remembering something grand but long gone. At its peak, Paleobotany is an invigorating listen that represents something fresh in black metal. While it strays away from that sound and wobbles in the middle, it begins and finishes strong. Paleobotany is more than just a gimmick or a paean to very big plants — it’s just a straight-up good album in its own right.
