[This submission has been channeled forth from a mysterious being once known as Peat. Its conjuring is almost complete, and its final form will emerge in time.]
Sometimes you come across a band and when reading up on them to place their work, you get very confused. That was the experience I had with Golden Core’s third album Kosmos Brenner. Everyone seemed to be talking about unpolished, lively stoner metal. I went and listened to their sophomore effort, Fimbultyr, and that’s what I heard. Then I went back and listened to Kosmos Brenner again. That’s when I understood I was catching a band in the process of evolution, for Golden Core have written ambitiously and borrowed from many sounds to help depict their view of Norse cosmology.
The end result is suitably grand and atmospheric for their subject matter. In particular, Golden Core have shoved a lot of black metal influence into their work here. At their very best they use it as a violent cathartic contrast to follow up passages of head-nodding, rumbling stoner fare, as with the ending of “De Dødes Hær”. More often it acts as an accent to their proggier, most post-metal moments in a manner latter-day Enslaved would approve of. This synthesis is both Kosmos Brenner‘s strength and weakness. The strength is in the mood it captures. This is music for changing your headspace and it maintains a degree of freshness in a crowded space. The weakness is that it’s easy to treat this as background music as a result rather than focusing on the sound itself. That weakness is only accentuated by a tendency for songs to drift without building to anything of note. After a few listens, I found myself wanting Golden Core to slam the hammer down and shift their dynamic a lot more than they do. It would have added a lot to multiple listens. I don’t know what Golden Core will do next. Maybe they’ll embrace that heavy aggressive element I want them to use more. Maybe they’ll drift into more atmospheric or folky realms, where they could also create great albums. Maybe Kosmos Brenner will be the high water point and Golden Core another footnote in metal history. It’s combination of elements continues to intrigue me though, and I’d like to see where this evolution leads.
