Furia Changes the Game Yet Again With Breakneck Curiosity on "Huta Luna" (Review)
If you stumbled upon 2016's Księżyc milczy luty (The moon is silent February) by Furia and had expected something, well, I don't know, furious maybe, you'd be forgiven for feeling a little shortchanged. That was a strange and gloomy album from Poland's department of black metal weirdness, otherwise known as the "Let the World Burn" collective. It wouldn't have been a great leap of the imagination to see the house band in David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me crack out some of the same songs.
The thing is, for this author at least, Furia has not once sounded the same. They first hit the radar with Martwa polska jesień (Dead Polish autumn) in 2007, which was being passed around solely on the strength of its conventionality. Yes, it was powerful black metal from a country with a storied history in the genre, but there wasn't much there that stood out as different at the time, aside from the occasional lengthy and clean instrumental passage.
…
…
Yet going from 2016 to Huta Luna, due out October 10th on Polish powerhouse Pagan Records, couldn't be more of a step change, and a pretty exciting one at that. You see, where Księżyc milczy luty plodded about in abject misery, Furia's first full-length in seven years is practically shorn of all negative emotions – and absolutely fucking furious to boot [read our interview with Furia here].
Not furious in the sense of anger specifically – we reckon that would count as a negative emotion – but in the playing. The majority of songs on Huta Luna clock in under four minutes and might average around 3:20. Coincidentally, the length of a good pop song. We count this as a wise decision because, frankly, we'd be astounded if any band could maintain this level of assault on the senses for the length of extreme metal's more meandering passages.
While Furia's fury manifests in the blistering blast beats and fret-defying guitars, the music itself speaks a different language, one of triumph and, dare we say, even joy. Speaking for myself here, but black metal that moves the listener to raise a fist, not in violence but in appreciation of life for all its absurdity, the highs and the rock-bottoms, is why I still find myself listening to it. Much in the same way that a death metal song describing graphic atrocities against the human body has me twerking in the kitchen.
Huta Luna feels as though Furia has jammed the fuck out of their Finnish counterparts in Havukruunu and thought they could not only play faster, but also much harder and looser. This means Furia's new album could fall under what we would tentatively describe as "adventure metal" – black metal that venerates the spirit of adventure, swords, fantasy, horseback fighting, touching grass, and so on.
But the truth is that's probably the "nekrofolk" talking – how the band would prefer to describe their music – rather than anything of strict thematic relevance. Though this term might cast you in mind of Furia's utterly degenerate compatriots Dead Raven Choir, Huta Luna instead seems intent on conquering and overcoming life's personal and social tribulations instead of dwelling on the filth of humanity. But nor is this Moonsorrow's pomp and synthesizer cheese. It's earthy, vital, and relatable, touching down somewhere in the no-man's-land between early Liturgy and later Graveland.
The opener, "Zamawianie trzecie" (Third Order), kicks off with a blast of feedback, a brief moment of spoken word, then a snap of the fingers – and it is totally balls to the wall from there for the next half hour. There isn't a shred of pessimism, hopelessness, apathy, or any of these things we find so commonly expressed in black metal. Just raw ecstasy.
Huta Luna simply doesn't let up. Where Furia's previous album seemed concerned with the low end, they now seem transfixed on high frequencies, traveling the length of the neck in seconds to bring a glistening, psychedelic edge to proceedings.
Take "Swawola niewola" (who knew there was such a catchy way to say "Free-spirited bondage" on Earth?), which drenches high notes in delay and reverb to create this swirling kaleidoscope of true grit. Don't forget to join in the gang chant of the song's title, though. Also scream "Na koń!" (On horse!) repeatedly for the next track, once again feeding into that "adventure metal" paradigm we described, which harbors an almost Western atmosphere in the way the guitars wobble. Mount up, and ride into battle against whatever personal demons you wish to run down.
Furia's infectious melodies and breakneck pace continue unabated for eight tracks until "Gore!" eventually trips over its galloping rhythms and breaks through into… a half-hour ambient drone track?
This is a major surprise for an already left-field album. If you like your black metal fearlessly inverting expectations, it's a guaranteed fuck on the first date. It's almost incomprehensible how we got here compared to where Furia has come from, yet here we are, and it's very, very good.
--Richard Currie
…
Huta Luna is out now via Pagan Records.
